You've got to hand it to that Jack Sparrow. Even after a giant kraken burps up half of the digested crew of the Black Pearl in his face, the scallywag still manages to find his way into a third Pirates of the Caribbean flick and the licensed movie-game.

Hey, we're not complaining. We haven't seen so wily a character as Jack, played with over-the-top panache by the exceptional Johnny Depp, in a long while. In Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, the upcoming swashbuckler from Disney Interactive Studios, Sparrow is re-created in fine form, thanks to a bang-up facial scan. Disney enlisted Industrial Light and Magic to help with the characters, and you'll instantly recognize almost all the major players from the films: Elizabeth Swann, Will Turner, Davy Jones (looks great), the crew of the Pearl and Jones's crew of underwater sea villains, including the first mate hammerhead.

At World's End spans both Dead Man's Chest and the upcoming summer blockbuster of the same name, and we recently got to play through a few levels from the first half of the game. Disney was tight-lipped on the levels inspired by the third movie. If you check out the trailer here, you can bet Jack and company will visit some exotic locales like the Far East, navigate past giant icebergs, and shoot cannonballs. Lots of cannonballs.

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Set a game in 1960s San Fransisco and it's likely to conjure up images of a mind-bending rhythm actioner with psychedelic visuals guaranteed to pop your eyeballs in an explosion of colour. This is Hei$st however, a brutal bank-robbing game which involves car-jacking, hold-ups and vicious shootouts. So much for 1969's Summer of Love.

While the hippies got high and the cool cats lapped up the city's new-found open-mindedness, Johnny Sutton enjoyed his first day out of the slammer. The latest in a long line of high-profile thieves, Johnny was banged up for following in the family's footsteps and pulling off a small-time robbery. Thing is, being inside didn't put him off a life of crime; instead it gave a thirst for the major league, an ambition to become known as the greatest bank robber of all time.

We've only seen snippets of the city but hope it's busier in the final game.
So begins Hei$t, a shooting 'n' stealing epic set in an open-world recreation of '60s San Francisco. It's a cross between Grand Theft Auto and a squad-based shooter like Ghost Recon, with players stepping into the no-doubt-stolen shoes of Johnny, out to make a name for himself.

It's not quite that simple, however - you can't simply walk into the first bank you see, empty the vault and then sit back and watch the credits roll. Every job needs to be meticulously planned otherwise you'll be back behind bars in a flash. That's where Uncle Sal comes in; he's the brains behind the outfit, the guy you go to when you need blueprints for the bank, details of the vault, the locations of the cameras - whatever you want, he'll get it for you, providing you give him time.

Pulling off a successful robbery is still not easy though, even if you're armed with every last piece of info on your target. Learning from experience is the only way you'll get the skills needed to tackle the bigger jobs, so it's best to start off small. Thankfully, Sal can help out here too, by highlighting the smaller local banks whose security isn't quite so tight. Once you've picked a target it's into the car and off around the city.

It's worth noting at this point that much of the city we explored in this very early build of the code looked desolate and sorely lacked detail. Compared to the bustling streets in the GTA IV trailer, Hei$t's city looks like a ghost town, with few cars and even fewer people trawling the streets. While we have no doubt the game will be considerably more populated and detailed by the time it's released in October, it was certainly the weakest part of the game so far.

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If you think the ASBO-ridden streets of Manchester are a nasty place to get caught after a Friday night out, spare a thought for the poor folk who live in the Middle Eastern city of Al-Khali. Turns out this once-peaceful town was built on top of the ancient ruins of a dozen conquerors and one Wednesday afternoon - or maybe it was early evening - all hell broke lose and a portal to the underworld opened up, allowing a tidal wave of unspeakable evil to come flooding through that, unless stopped, will spell the end of the world.

If ordinary weapons don't have any effect, try magic.
All is not lost, however. Like the proverbial thug-nicking bobby on the beat, Al-Khali has its own police presence, but the guys who are patrolling the streets in this game are a hell of a lot meaner than the rozzers who roam the local estates. In fact, the Jericho team are a bunch of misfit psychopaths who probably shouldn't be trusted with high-velocity machineguns, but they're the only suckers stupid enough to enter the city limits of Al-Khali to find out what exactly's going on.

So begins Jericho, a squad-based, horror-themed first-person shooter penned by British gore god, Clive Barker. After all contact with Al-Khali was lost, a seven-man strike team - the Jerichos - were sent into investigate. It's an adventure that travels through time and space, with team Jericho fighting through the modern-day city, as well as incarnations set during World War II, the Crusades, during Roman times and back to the fourth millennium BC, when the trouble all started.

Starting in the modern day, scouring the labyrinthine streets, the Jerichos are surrounded by demolished buildings which rise up on each side while flaming debris lies scattered across the ground. More worrying however, is the army of ghoulish freaks roaming the shadows. These skeletal warriors have travelled up from the depths of Hades and, within seconds, it all kicks off.

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You're just an ordinary guy trying to survive." So says Dean Martinetti, producer at Sparks Unlimited, after demoing the opening scene in Turning Point: Fall of Liberty, in which a flat-capped builder becomes the unlikely hero of the US resistance. However, there's nothing ordinary about what we've just seen, because the streets of New York - its tower blocks and famous landmarks such as the Empire State Building and Statue of Liberty - are engulfed in flame and are being unceremoniously razed to the ground by an invading German force. Nationalist flag-waving this ain't - well, not unless you're a Nazi - and contrary to Call of Duty and Medal of Honor et al, there's no heroic leader to save the world and the US doesn't win.

Enemy fighters scream between buildings as you make your descent.
Turning Point: Fall of Liberty is a departure from the traditional war-torn first-person shooter because it takes a genre that's been milked of all creativity and breathes new life into it. Sure, you use guns to mow down Nazis and the action rarely shifts out of fifth gear, but there's a lot that's different about Turning Point. Take the story: In 1931 Winston Churchill is hit by a taxi, an event that actually happening all those years ago. Only, in the game, the accident was fatal, so there's no Churchill to deliver that speech and no leader to inspire the troops to victory. Instead the Nazi force overthrew the British, pushing our boys out of France and seizing control of Europe. Eight years later and the Germans have amounted a vast army which is sent across the Atlantic, ready to take over the US.

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If you were a child growing up in the '80s, you were aware of the cultural phenomenon known as the Transformers. The wildly popular cartoon that initially ran for almost 100 episodes spawned an animated movie, massive toy and merchandise line, and became a pop culture reference. Well, it's taken more than twenty years, but the Transformers will be returning to the silver screen this summer. Thanks to Activision and Traveller's Tales, the galaxy spanning battle between Autobots and Decepticons will rage in homes as well when Transformers: The Game is released this June.

Tied very closely to the story of the movie, the plot of the game revolves around the discovery and retrieval of the Allspark, an item that provides the life giving soul for every Transformer. Hidden away on Earth during the massive war on Cybertron between Autobots and Decepticons, the Allspark could tip the balance of power to either side, making it a valuable tactical prize for both factions. Unfortunately for the unsuspecting humans on Earth, their world is about to become the latest battlefield between the robot warriors. Here's where players come in: as soon as the game starts, you're given your chance to decide which side you want to play. If you choose the Autobots, you attempt to protect Earth and its inhabitants from the ravaging forces of the Decepticons. This selection follows many of the events from the film rather closely. On the other hand, if you select the Decepticons, you'll follow a "what if" scenario where the evil machines smash their way through civilization.

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If they wanted to, Disney Interactive Studios could probably put together a Flash-based game where players attempt to toss bottles of rum into the mouth of a poorly animated Johnny Depp and sell the thing to thousands of ravenous Pirates of the Caribbean fans. Thankfully, that's not the plan for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.

This week, the House of Mouse let IGN get its hands on the videogame that combines action from the movies Pirate of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and unreleased Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. The first thing that jumps off the screen with At World's End is the detail developers have already put into this tale. Orlando Bloom's face is spot on, the drunk-like stagger of Captain Jack Sparrow is recreated with the push of the joystick and vocal doubles for the cast of characters are perfect.



Nice hats.With the theater release of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End about a month away, it's about time for the marketing machine to kick into high gear and bring "Yo-ho" back as a household word, and videogames are going to be a big part of that - seven incarnations of the film are being released simultaneously. The PS3 and Xbox 360 versions are identical, the DS is its own entity, and the Wii, PS2, PSP and PC all share the same version with some slight variations when it comes to control. While the 360 and PS3 focus on recreating the look and feel of the movies, the other models focus on unique gameplay.

There are three basic attacks for a pirate - a light sword attack, a heavy sword attack and an item attack. Although the swordplay will be the meat and potatoes of this high-sea adventure, plucky pirates can pick up guns and knives along the way. A HUD in the upper-left corner of the screen keeps track of how many bullets, throwing knives and chickens - that's health for these sea-lovers - remain as well as how many "Black Pearls" are left. Rather than just let you be a yellowbelly and hold down the block button for the duration of an attack, developers instituted the Black Pearl system to keep you honest. Each time an opponent lands a hit on your block, a quarter of one of your pearls disappears. If you exhaust the pearls, your blocking is disabled until it has time to recharge.

Although the scurvy dogs showing At World's End wouldn't say how the movie will end end, they were happy to showcase select levels from the game, which feature key battles and extended stories from the films. One level - Isla de Pelegostos - put players into the swashbuckling sneakers of Will Turner as he teamed with Jack to escape the savages holding the duo captive. The setting drew heavily from Dead Man's Chest as Will freed trapped pirates and jogged across bridges, but wasn't limited to what happened in the flick. As the savages attacked young Mr. Turner, he had multiple choices as far as how he could dispatch them. Will could hack at them with his sword, shoot them, grab them or perform the special move called "Ole" - when enemies rush at a the main character, the player can hold the correct button and move the joystick to one side to perform a sidestep maneuver that, in this case, sends bad guys past Will and over the cliff.

Can't we settle this in a dance contest?The game even made use of interactive cinemas as Will and Jack battled a trio of natives on a rickety bridge. Once the bad guys met the duo on the walkway, the game cut to a movie where buttons would pop on screen. If a player hit the right buttons quickly enough, the cinema progressed with Will and Jack laying the smackdown on some natives, but if a button was missed, the scene started from the beginning.

At World's End won't drop anchor on consoles for another month, but it's clear Disney is on the right track and keeping with the humor and character of the movies -- and if that doesn't excite fans, the pirate's booty of unlockable characters to plays as, pirate rankings and more should have them eager to set sail and pick up this title.

via IGN ...

via ps3fanboy

We say confirmed with a question mark because the debate is still up in the air, but apparently there was a little scuffle between a group of message board visitors and a Gran Turismo development staff member regaring the issue of damage to the licensed cars. The staff member worked on Gran Turismo HD and is hard at work on Gran Turismo 5, which is awesome. But here are a few quotes from the guy worth scratching our chins over:


"...We're not ready to implement damage until they can be shown in a truly authentic way (which is extremely hard work if you think about it)."
Damage in Gran Turismo would make the franchise unstoppable, don't you think? He responds: "No I mean, really, really, really hard work... to the extent of creating another game, almost. From our standards, what other games are doing is "simplified damage". You know how [anal] we are when making our games... we would want to simulate every single dent differently."

Not sure why they bleeped out anal -- it's a perfectly appropriate word, because Polyphony Digital really does get down to the most painstaking detail when crafting these games. So what's this sound like to you? The staff member who said this checks out. He's completely legit (but we can't reveal the obvious). We're saying there won't be damage this time. Maybe for GT5 A-Spec or something. I dunno. I won't mind. Besides, you're not supposed to crash in the driving sim games. ...

Via Slashdot

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Via Slashdot

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