North America gets exclusive special edition

Capcom have announced that North American gamers will be getting an exclusive special edition for Dead Rising 2, called the Zombrex Edition. It will go on sale on launch date, which is the 28^th of September, 2010. Available on both the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, the Zombrex Edition will be priced at $79.99.

The Zombrex edition contents are as follows:

PS3

• Exclusive Two-Disc Steelbook case includes:
• Dead Rising 2 game disc
• Blu-Ray Disc featuring a High-Definition 24 minute “Making of” featurette
• Complete box contents include:
• Steelbook case (described above)
• Zombrex “Syringe” pen
• Zombrex “Prescription” notepad (25 pages)
• Zombrex “Safety” card
• Zombrex “Prospectus” Sales Brochure (16 pages).
• Dead Rising 2 Hardback Artbook (48 pages)
• Voucher for  XMB Dynamic Theme

XBOX 360

• Exclusive Two-Disc Steelbook case includes:
• Dead Rising 2 game disc
• High-Definition game disc with 83 Minute “Zombrex Dead Rising Sun” motion picture and 24 minute “Making of” featurette
• Complete box contents include:
• Steelbook case (described above)
• Zombrex “Syringe” pen
• Zombrex “Prescription” notepad (25 pages)
• Zombrex “Safety” card
• Zombrex “Prospectus” Sales Brochure (16 pages).
• Dead Rising 2 Hardback Artbook (48 pages)

The PS3 version gets an extra Blu-Ray disc for 24 minutes of footage. Yes, you read that right. No, really. An extra blu-ray for 24 minutes of footage. Heh.

The image above of the $200 “Nano Edition” looks to contain a backpack, a statue of the game’s protagonist, a 176 page artbook and a special case for the game. The listing also contained a couple of other things that aren’t in the image, but nobody has a clue on what those things actually are.

Either way, expect an announcement from EA soon.

According to IO Interactive, participants of Kane and Lynch 2’s restricted demo have made successful heists worth a whopping 27 billion dollars. 116000 participants weren’t so lucky though, as they were killed in action, with only a meager 8000 players being killed by undercover cops. That’s a lot of crook versus crook. Getting into character, are we?

Additionally, here are a few screens of players around the world on America’s China’s Most Wanted:

Arc System Works, 2D fighter specialists and developers of the much acclaimed Guilty Gear and Blazblue series, have a countdown up for an announcement on their official site. The countdown ends 11 days from now, on the 23^rd of July.

As for what the announcement may entail, your guess is as good as ours. However, here’s hoping for a new Guilty Gear title!

A brand new CGI trailer for Ubisoft’s futuristic aerial combat title, Tom Clancy’s HAWX 2, has been released.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o31HyrM9f6U

Ubisoft Romania also took this opportunity to answer a few questions for us regarding what’s new in this sequel, their vision, and what they plan to do from now on. So without much further ado, here’s the Q&A.

GM: What are the new gameplay elements in HAWX 2?

Ubisoft: The key idea driving the development was the idea of offering the true feel of modern air conflict, with all of its various experiences, like watching a wall of anti-air guns through night vision, using a precision bomb on a target, refueling your plane in mid-air, take off and landing, using carriers and so on. It was important for us not just to include these new features, but to integrate them into a convincing world and to improve the look and feel of it, to render more authentically what aerial warfare in the modern era is like.

So we have built a complete experience that includes the iconic moments present in the collective memory and also the trends in the military development.

GM: Have you done any improvements concerning the graphics?

Ubisoft: We are using the top solution available, GeoEye hi-res satellite imagery. Our environments are huge – 130km x 130km – which is what you need when you give players the freedom to sprint around at Mach 2. They offer some spectacular and diverse vistas, including mountains, deserts, mountainous coastal regions and some well known cities, like Cape Town. We also manage to add a great deal of detail where it matters – for instance you will be able to see people going about their jobs in the bases where you take off.

GM: Are you planning to release DLC after release?

Ubisoft: We can’t confirm this info at this point. For sure we’d like to offer interesting content after release

GM: Will HAWX 2 support Playstation Move or Microsoft Kinect?

Ubisoft: It will not support these features.

GM: HAWX 2 is coming for PC too. Will this game also use the Ubi Launcher for copy protection?

Ubisoft: It’s too early to confirm this information but the general policy is to use copy protection at this point.

GM: The first HAWX took place between the events of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 and EndWar. Does HAWX 2 have plot connections with other Tom Clancy’s games too?

Ubisoft: The storyline in HAWX 2 starts in the Middle East, in the near future. The HAWX squadron is deployed in the Middle East, where insurgent activity is showing a rise both in the level of activity and in the violence of it. With new insurgent leaders rising in several hotspots of the world and a number of nuclear weapons belonging to Russia being mysteriously stolen, a storm is brewing and the HAWX are sent to the center of it. There are connections with other events in the Tom Clancy universe, but revealing them now would spoil our surprises.

GM: What is the involvement of Tom Clancy in the storylines of the HAWX series?

Ubisoft: Tom Clancy is not directly involved at this point in the HAWX series. However, we are creating an experience that is very much Clancy, because we have access to all that past experiences and his long-term vision. This means first and foremost a realistic and thought provoking scenario involving elite military teams and operations to solve a near future conflict

Next Page – Cont’d

Along with paper usage elimination, Ubisoft have also partnered with Technimark, Inc. to create eco-friendly DVD cases for their PC releases. Splinter Cell: Conviction, which releases on the 30^th of April, will be the first to boast these cases.

Laurent Detoc, president of Ubisoft North America had this to say: “Eco-friendly initiatives are important to the global community and introducing in-game digital manuals on Xbox 360 and PS3 is just the latest example of Ubisoft’s ongoing commitment to being a more environmentally conscious company.”

Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed 2 has apparently broken a Guinness World Record – that of the “Most Cover Featured Video Game”. The game was used as a lead cover story on 127 different publications in 32 countries, between April 2009 and April 2010. The record will be shortlisted for entry in the next edition of Guinness World Records Gamer’s Edition.

Gaz Deaves, Editor of Guinness World Records Gamer’s Edition, said: “The evidence submitted by Ubisoft was extremely thorough, with full details of every publication that featured the game. It’s been a pleasure researching this category and we were pleasantly surprised that Assassin’s Creed II took the record – I’m sure plenty of commentators (including myself) would have predicted another well-known game winning the title instead, and this achievement is even more impressive in view of the other 2009 releases that Assassin’s Creed II was able to beat”.

This is good news for Ubisoft, as the Assassin’s Creed franchise has gone from “broken record” to “record breaking” in the span of one game. You’ve got to wonder though, which game’s record did it break? That’s probably something we will never find out.

Rising English star Stuart Broad is set to feature on the cover of Codemasters’ upcoming cricket game, International Cricket 2010.

“It’s fantastic for me to follow in the footsteps of legends like Brian Lara and feature on the front of a Codemasters cricket game,” said Broad. “I’m a huge gamer so it’s exciting to be involved with Codemasters, who have always produced the most authentic and realistic cricket games. When I’m away with the team tour, playing games on our consoles is a great way to pass the time and enjoy some banter. I can’t wait to take on the rest of the lads - and beat them  – in International Cricket 2010!”

“Stuart Broad has established himself as one of the most exciting players in world cricket and we’re delighted to sign him up to feature on the front of the pack,” added John Szoke, Producer, Codemasters.

Along with this announcement, Codemasters also unveiled a few screenshots, and the first gameplay video. Before you watch the video over here, check out our screenshot gallery.

Developed by Trickstar Games, International Cricket 2010 is set for a summer release on the Playstation 3 and XBOX360 systems.

Ubisoft’s sequel to Assassin’s Creed  came out for consoles late last year, and to very positive reviews across the board (You can read our review of the game here). PC gamers had to wait to continue their Renaissance-era adventure though, but that wait is now over. AC2 is out for the PC, and here’s the lowdown on how it performs.

To all those wondering –The game runs smoothly at higher frame-rates than the console version, the controls are fluid and responsive (pro-tip: use a controller. The keyboard controls aren’t bad, but it just feels better with a controller), and the game is a bug-free experience. I could say that it runs at a much higher resolution too, but that’d be misleading. The jump in texture quality from the console versions is not anywhere near the jump that AC1’s PC version boasted of, and this is exposed by disabling the game’s post-processing filter, which strangely enough makes the game look better. So this is not one of those games where the PC version is vastly superior, but surely the most important thing has to be the one mentioned in the opening sentence of this paragraph – that it is a good port.

Where the PC version definitely outdoes the console versions though, is in the fact that both the DLCs – The Battle of Forli and Bonfire of Vanities, are bundled with the game. These were extra sequences that console owners had to dish out money for, but now they are available to PC gamers for free. Ubisoft’s decision to make people pay for stuff that should’ve been on-disc was widely criticized (You can read our reviews for the DLCs here and here), but they have somewhat made amends by sweetening the deal for the PC gamers.

The new DRM system that Ubisoft have implemented is a topic of much debate over the internet, and rightly so. AC2, like the other games that house this system, requires players to have a persistent internet connection. Yup, you need to stay online and connected to Ubisoft’s serves to play AC2, even though it’s a single Player game with no multiplayer mode. What this means is that gamers are completely at mercy to the competence of Ubisoft’s server management, or for that matter, their own ISPs. While it wasn’t much of an issue for me (to be honest, the system was pretty much invisible for me during my playthrough), I can see how this would be a massive inconvenience for some people with slower or inconsistent internet connections.

Closing Comments:

If you haven’t played the game already, Assassin’s Creed 2′s PC version is undoubtedly the one to get. It’s a good port, comes with the DLCs bundled, and looks better than the console versions, even if not by much. However, if you’re someone who plays games on the move, or are someone with an unreliable internet connection, you might want to have a long, hard think about this one.

Ubisoft released the launch trailer for Splinter Cell: Conviction. Don’t forget to subscribe to our youtube channel after you’re done viewing it! The trailer looks kinda okay , nothing which will blow you off your feet. We have three new screens of Sam Fisher aswell, which on the other hand are full on win.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK5-SFf5S_o