Just over a minutes worth of footage showing off the in-game content of Champions Online.

This week’s Zero Punctuation takes on Ghostbusters The Videogame. Yahtzee’s not afraid to take on games and films with a deeply devoted and sometime rabid fan base to task. It’s an ugly brawl and he manages to pull Star Trek and Dr. Who into the fray.

Although I may not always agree with his opinion, I always enjoy it. Yahtzee isn’t afraid to cut anyone down to size including himself.

You can view the Zero punctuation videogame review archives on The Escapist.

You’d have to be living in a cave to not have come across the Apple iPhone its many fanatical disciples. Most people who have them seem to not be able to put them down as if their brains might cease to function if they moveed too far away. We’ve even had to introduce a “no iPhones during gaming” policy for certain hard cases. Yes you know who you are.

There are a plethora of applications for this portable Pandora’s Box. Adam Sessler has taken it upon himself to look at the extremely varied apps labeled as games. Considering that both iShoot, the miniaturized Scorched Earth, and the infamous Baby Shaker apps are both classified as games, what comes to mind for each user can be vastly different. Sessler describes the phenomena best noting, “Distinction is not an American trait.”

I’m a fan of machinima productions, from the high quality like Red vs. Blue and the “Still Seeing Breen” music video to the Neverending Nights series, its amazing what a few creative gamers and cinematographers can come up with using video games as their tools. Well stumbling around the net I found an interesting article at LowPings.net featuring a number of interesting Half-Life 2 machinima that I’d previously not seen before that feel more like professional cinema productions than fan films.

The post includes some roughs and I found Combine Nation, which is like Combine Cops, and Ignis Solus which is like an existential art piece with flamethrowers. We keep having this debate as games not being or creating art.. but these cinema pieces definitely show that while you may debate the merits of games themselves, as tools of creation they can be something quite a bit more.

The post also links to some interesting series like Maintenance Man, Freeman’s Mind and Escape from City 17, a live action production I mentioned a few months back.

Here’s a quick reminder of how awesome video editing can make HL2 a tool for movie creation:

Any way you cut it the convergence of games and cinema is here.. lucky us, we just get to sit back and enjoy the results. I’m always on the look out for new series or shorts, feel free to share your favorites in the discussion boards in this post and maybe we’ll highlight them in a future article.

I know its gone from a game we never talk about to a game flooding our coverage lately, but the change to free-to-play has actually piqued my interest in Turbine’s often overlooked Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO). News of the changes coming to the game seem to indicate that the developer is not making the revenue change and resting on its laurels.

Today Turbine released word that its planning to add new content to the title once it transitions to the Unlimited pay model including two adventure packs and a new player class along with tweaks to the game’s action-oriented combat system. The new class, called a Favored Soul, is a form of holy warrior combining martial prowess with lots of spellcasting and healing abilities. Filling a combat niche similar to how a Barbarian relates to a traditional Fighter or Ranger, the Favored Soul packs some pretty specialized power and makes a very good utility class for solo players.

The two new adventure packs – one a wilderness adventure on another plane of existence and the other a crime drama – did not state the levels required to play but based upon descriptions look to fill out the upper tier and mid-range leveling option.

You can find Eva’s discussion with Turbine’s PR Manager Adam Mersky about the changes here.
Details of the full press release are after the jump.

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Atari and Cryptic has released fresh screenshots for the upcoming comic superhero MMO Champions Online. I continue to be amazed and how much the avatars look like classic comic book illustration. The cell shading is incredible in these screens. Of course I haven’t seen these in action running through my piddly notebook ATI card yet, but I have high hopes.

Check out the full compliment of action shots for Champions Online after the break.
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Turbine is tempting gamers to try out the new free upgrade of Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited with a ton of new screenshots to whet their appetites. There plenty of dungeons and chromatic dragons in these screens. Shots of Shavarath, Sorrowdusk, the Ruins of  Threnal and Gianthold show off the architecture, character design and special effects DDO has to offer. You’ll also find favorites opponents such as the petrifying denizens of the Underdark beholders and mind flayers, lizardmen and demons in the menagerie of monsters featured in these screens.

In case you missed the announcement, you can get all the details on the DDO Eberron Unlimited free upgrade from Gaming Today. Follow the break to pick out a new desktop from these fantastic Eberron screens.
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Would a Neverwinter Nights be a viable MMO? Sources at Variety say Atari is betting on it. Supposedly it’s the whole reason Atari bought out Cryptic Studios.

I question whether porting NwN into the massively multiplayer realm is really a sure thing. The most obvious obstacle is taking BioWare and Obsidian out of the equation. However, I believe that taking the modding out of the game which has already spawned many persistent worlds which are essentially mini MMO themselves will take away one of the elements that makes NwN such a fascinating setting.

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Dungeons & Dragons Online, Turbine’s under-performing adaptation of the popular pen-and-paper game and its Eberron setting is going through changes when Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited launches this summer. The relaunch converts the existing game – D&D Online: Stormreach from a subscription game to a free-to-play title. In addition to changing the business model, the game is also promising to increase the current level cap to 20 while including many features typically reserved for paid games like crafting, raiding and guilds.

Dungeons & Dragons Online uses a highly altered version of the 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons rules and includes many of the core classes players will recognize from the tabletop settings. For those unfamiliar, Eberron – the game’s setting, has a distinct magi-punk feel featuring Indiana Jones meets The Lord of the Rings style themes and locations. The game will not restrict player levels or play time and will also implement a new DDO Store feature for players to purchase dungeons packs, hirelings and equipment not available in the standard game. Additionally a new DDO Unlimited VIP account option gain server priority, more character slots and access to all premium content along with a stipend of 500 DDO Store credits each month for upgrades and alterations.

As a fan of D&D, I avoided the game once I discovered it was not going to accurately model the game it was licensed from, but this switch to a free-play mode might just convince me to take a crack at it. Considering the rumor that Atari might be considering using newly acquired Cryptic Studios to revamp their Neverwinter Nights franchise as an MMO could there be a fight for the D&D MMO on the horizon?

You can check out the full details in the press release after the jump. Those interested in offering to beta the new title can also apply here.

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While the release of Atari’s Champions Online may have slipped more than a bit from July to September the media assault keeps on coming. This cross platform massively multiplayer online game was in solid form a year ago when I spent hands on time with the title and the screens released today show off a few of the game’s more pedestrian environments – Snake Gulch, a old west theme park populated by out of control Wild West robots (a la Westworld) and some urban back alleys filled with vigilante justice. Considering flight plays a big role in so many super hero games, Cryptic also released a cool screen showing a winged hero soaring above Millennium City.

Click the link to see all four new screens.

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