This trailer displays the choice of either harvesting the life force of the little girls or saving them.

This week 2K Games is giving baseball fans the chance to play THE BIGS 2 before the release date. These two big community events run June 30th, 6:00 PM PST at the Wilshire Grand in LA and July 1st, 6:00 PM EST at the Hilton New York in New York City.

For those of you who want a play by play but can’t attend, keep tabs on the events on the THE BIGS 2 forums. The full details on how to get signed up for these THE BIGS 2 party events follow the jump.
Gamers can pre-order THE BIGS 2 for Xbox 360, Wii Ps2, PS3 and PSP. The game launches July 7th. Read the full article »

Freedom Force, the Silver and Gold age super hero game that broke the curse, didn’t feature a licensed universe with Superman or Captain America. Instead, it played like a tribute to the classic comic book story and while it never became a mainstream commercial success it remains an active and cherished game for its fans and their modification efforts.

This weekend, IGN uploaded an interview featuring 2k Boston’s( formerly Irrational Games) Ken Levine, who was executive producer on both games as well as writer, and some key members of the Irrational Games team regarding the past, present and future of the game series. Levine and his team discuss the rough ride the series experienced, their personal favorite characters in the Irrational universe and the passion it requires to get a self-published sequel out on the street.

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When you create an intense atmospheric game with an intriguing story how best do you continue that story?

Apparently 2K Games thinks you add useless multiplayer to the sequel.

Today 2K Games sent out a media blast revealing the multiplayer functionality of Bioshock 2 in the most marketing rich, vague terms possible. Supposedly the multiplayer game will allow players to experience Rapture before the fall as Plasmid test subjects. The release seems to indicate that a key aspect of this game mode will be combining Plasmids and weapons while discovering how everyday life progressed in the Utopian model society.

“The fans asked for a multiplayer experience and we answered,” said Christoph Hartmann, president of 2K. “With Digital Extremes delivering a multiplayer experience for BioShock 2 that features all of the things that make BioShock unique, we’re holding ourselves to a high standard so that we can deliver the depth and variety that fans of the BioShock universe demand.”

I’m not sure why anyone was asking for a multiplayer component in Bioshock 2, but I guess I’m in the increasing minority of folks who can enjoy a single player title without feeling it is incomplete without some mindless online mode filled with Xbox Live! p0wning idiots.
The other thing that stands out to me is that they are trying to fill in backstory that we get by playing through the game.. is it really necessary to spell it all out when we know how and why Rapture fell(or at least a good portion of that tale)?

Maybe I’m being too harsh and with so little real information on what form the multiplayer mode might take. This could all be an interesting exercise, though the press release makes certain to point out Digital Extremes’ FPS shooter expertise which is worrying.

You can read all the lovely details after the jump.
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Ken Levine; lead designer, co-founder, president and creative director for 2K Boston; will be giving the commencement address for the Cohort 9 graduation. The event takes place at 2:30 December 13th at The Guildhall at Southern Methodist University which is know as the premier graduate videogame education program in the U.S.

Levine is the creative force behind BioShock and will be working on BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams at 2K Marin. More about the Guildhall at Southern Methodist University follows break.
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World of Warcraft players certainly don’t mind that 7-Eleven has been dabbling in the field of selling videogames. Thanks to the apparent disregard for street dates, WoW players were able to secure early copies (albeit not early access) of Wrath of the Lich King. The retail chain has announced that its recent sales of games like WoW, Halo, and Madden isn’t a temporary holiday cash-in — they’re planning on permanently adding videogames to their inventory (via Joystiq).

“This is not just a holiday promotion for us,” explained 7-Eleven category manager for gaming and electronics, “but a brand new product line-up that will be available year-round. We may not be a total entertainment destination … yet, but we’re hoping to expand our selection beyond the high-dollar, hot-selling games to include options for all budgets, like value-priced video games as well as DVD movies. For consumers wanting convenient one-stop shopping for at-home entertainment along with groceries and gas or who just want to avoid big-store shopping inconveniences, their local 7-Eleven store is open and ready.”

In addition to Wrath of the Lich King, 7-Eleven is planning on selling the Guitar Hero World Tour band kit, Fallout 3, Quantum of Solace, Gears of War 2, WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2009, and Call of Duty: World at War. They’ll also begin selling subscription cards for around 20 games and services ranging from Xbox Live to City of Heroes to Runescape.

Picking up a game at 7-Eleven seems to be more of a convenience rather than an alternative, at least at this point. Unless you’ve got one closer to home than any other retailer, will gamers really opt to go there instead of GameStop, Best Buy, or Walmart? But if they decided to throw in a free Slurpee with the purchase of any full-priced game, that might just give them the edge that makes it the premiere destination for picking up big-name games. It would for me, at least.

Undoubtedly the highlight of this week’s PlayStation Store update (which, once again, ignores PSP owners altogether) is the release of the long-awaited BioShock challenge rooms, as promised earlier. For $10, you’ll be able to work your way through three separate scenarios: Rescuing a Little Sister from a carnival, killing a Big Daddy without any weapons, and tackling a series of rooms containing wave after wave of enemies.

Also new this week is downloadable content for Dead Space (various skin packs and weapon packs, ranging from $1-$4) and new costumes for Little Big Planet (a free Sack in the Box costume and a $3 LocoRoco pack which has five different costumes). Rock Band and Guitar Hero World Tour square off, with GH adding three tracks from The Raconteurs ($2 each of $5.49 for a bundle of all three), while Rock Band 1 and Rock Band 2 get three songs from Mission of Burma and three from the Dead Kennedys (both artists’ music costs $2 each or $5.49 for a bundle of all three songs). There are also four other songs from Crooked X ($1), Lacuna Coil ($2 each), and In This Moment ($2), which you can get in a bundle for $5.49. Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol Encore 2 also gets five new songs, each for just $1.49.

Aside from that, there’s a demo of MotoGP ‘08 (which you can check out on PC at FileFront) as well as some videos, trailers, and themes of everything from NBA 2K9 to Hancock.

Sorry, PSP owners. I wasn’t teasing you — there really is nothing for you this week.

Keith Shetler, assistant producer at 2K Boston, has posted some news over on the PlayStation Blog that should get owners of BioShock for the PS3 pretty excited. The Challenge Rooms Add-On Content pack will be hitting the PlayStation Network today for $9.99 with two new play modes: New Game Plus and Challenge Rooms which are promised to add new twists to the game.

New Game Plus allows you to start a new supercharged playthrough of the game where you begin the game with any weapons, abilities, and inventory that you collected during a previous playthrough.

Challenge Rooms are puzzle rooms where the objective is to rescue a Little Sister where you can fight a Big Daddy without any weapons or try and survive room after room of Splicers.

It was hard enough as it was to bring down a Big Daddy, but the thought of trying to do it without any weapons pretty much terrifies me. Seriously, if you would have hooked me up to a heart monitor while I was playing this game, my pulse would have made the thing overheat every single time I encountered one of those bad boys.

The new trailer for BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams may have many questioning just what 2K Boston has in store for us with such archaic imagery, but there are those who are wonder just what else there could possibly be left to do in Rapture. What or whom survived the last round remains to be seen, but what we do know, thanks to a recent quote from 2K representative Charlie Sinhaseni on Gamespot, is that the game is “destined” for the PS3, Windows based PCs and the Xbox 360.

While a psychic barnyard animal could have predicted that, what we are still unsure of is if each port of the game will be released simultaneously or not. Hopefully, this time around that will be the case–that way those who wish to play the PS3 version will not have to once again wait an whole painful year to get the game on their system.

When BioShock 2 was officially announced back in March, Take-Two stated that not only would Ken Levine be involved in some capacity, but that the game would be released sometime during the company’s Q4 fiscal year, which means we can hopefully expect it to hit sometime between August and October 2009.

Granted, that is over a year away and a lot can happen between now and then, but let’s keep our fingers crossed that this time around everyone will be able venture back into Rapture on the same day. In the meantime, just keep your eyes glued to 1UP for a more official announcement.