Final Fantasy XI players have a launch date for “A Moogle Kupo d’Etat – Evil in Small Doses” to look forward to. Square Enix has announced this second add-on scenario for FFXI will be available for pre-purchase for $9.99 via the PlayOnline Viewer July 5th. This new content is for any characters that have reached level 10 on their main job.

“It all started with an innocent drop of rainwater and a rickety, ramshackle Mog House desperately in need of repair.

Little did anyone suspect that this would be the beginning of a harrowing nightmare unheard of in the annals of moogle-kind”

The first of Masato Kato’s trio of add-ons, “A Crystalline Prophecy – Ode of Life Bestowing,” is already available. “A Shantotto Ascension – The Legend Torn, Her Empire Born” will round out the series. “A Moogle Kupo d’Etat – Evil in Small Doses” requires the first FFXI expansion, RISE OF THE ZILART.

Have you ever really felt bad about the way you feel after playing a game you were looking forward to?

Of course you have, I think it might be one of the few constants of the gamer experience – disappointment when a game fails to live up to its potential and promise. Well, Prototype is one of those experiences for me.

It has all the ingredients of a smashing good time – a super powered hero, a sandbox city, even a conspiracy relating to the military industrial complex manipulating people for their own nefarious ends only to have it go wrong somehow.

Well, despite the mix of interesting pieces, the sum of Prototype just ends up coming out as a fairly bland experience. Maybe my expectation was improperly set by the history of the developer. These same talented folks turned out one of the best super hero games ever developed – Incredible Hulk Ultimate Destruction. That title featured a super powered hero running around in a sandbox New York city setting solving missions and running side missions just like Prototype but somehow the fun factor seemed to be higher in that title.

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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 »

Last week we saw the id/Bethesda merger under parent company ZeniMax Media and there was much rejoicing, but what if Electronic Arts merged its two online game developers into one giant super developer wouldn’t that raise some eyebrows and be general cause for mass excitement?

Well that actually happened as the publishing giant reorganized a bit putting RPG mavens Bioware and long time MMO developers Mythic in the same division. While the two studios will remain mostly autonomous for the time being, they now both have a single reporting line up the chain to the big bosses and money men. That single leader? Bioware’s Dr. Ray Muzyka.

Dr. Muzyka’s ascencion to the head of the organization basically also points to the exit of Mythic’s longtime leader Mark Jacobs. According to Jacob’s blog the MMO pioneer is taking a sabatical for awhile and he leaves with a classy ‘I’m not going to dish on anything, I’m just going to thank folks and peacefully step aside’ sort of announcement – a classy response that we don’t get to see so often these days.

Regarding the future path of the now combined studio’s efforts, Dr. Muzyka indicated in an official response over on IGN that:

Anything’s possible. We can’t say it wouldn’t happen. There’s no active plans, currently to do that, but the teams at Mythic and BioWare I know from talking to all of them, they’re really excited about working together, so I think that fuels a lot of cool things.

Warhammer: Age of Reckoning is still holding strong in the WoW dominated MMO market while Bioware’s first effort – the much anticipated Star Wars: The Old Republic is still a ways off. Mythic has a lot of experience that could help the minds at Bioware pull off their vision of Star Wars and maybe even put a dent in the Warcraft numbers but only time will tell if this pairing will be all it seems.

Serious Sam is one of the most insane FPS games I think I’ve ever played, second only to the highly underrated Painkiller, but when news broke a few days ago that the developers of the title – Croteam – were bringing an updated version of the initial Serious Sam title to the Xbox 360 I was cautiously optimistic.

Seriously!, a Serious Sam fansite recently had a chance to discuss the upcoming remake and the possibilities of a third game full game for the series with Croteam’s CTO Alen Ladavac.

Here are some of the highlights:

Q: Will we see the return of many of the features from Serious Sam 1 that were absent in Serious Sam 2 like Mental mode, custom gravity and saturation/colour bias sliders?

A: Mostly yes, plus, SSHD holds some more improvements that are in line with where SSFE was, and SS3 adds some more specific stuff to gameplay and options. But custom gravities, unfortunately, not yet.

Q: Will there be an achievements/unlock/rewards system for superior gaming skills?

A: Yes, there already is in SSHD.

Q: Will the sound engine have more extensive support for integrated sound cards and soundchips? Will the engine include support for OpenAL implementation as an alternative to Creative EAX?

A: SE3 supports DirectSound W&W/O EAX, OpenAL, and XAudio2. But XAudio2 rocks so much, you won’t want to use anything else. That will be the default, and there probably won’t be a menu option to use the other two at all (only through the console). XAudio2 works perfectly, no matter which chip you have. We were never able to get this much reliablity in reproducing the same sound effects with other APIs before, ever since our old software mixer (which has not been used for quite some time). Effectively, XAudio2 _is_ a software mixer, and that is why it works so well.

Check out the discussion thread on our forums over on the site to see the rest.

There’s a playable demo up for the PC version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince game. This free Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Playable Demo will give you a taste of potion making, dueling and playing as the Captain of the Gryffindor quidditch team.

Gamers and Harry Potter fans should watch the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Quidditch Preview for four minutes of gameplay footage. The new motion capture setup for quidditch is really great. It’s more believable than ever before.

Check out the star studded Making of the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince trailer as well.

This weekend Xbox has hooked up with Linkin Park to offer gamers a shot at playing frontman Mike Shinoda at Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. For your chance to Game With Fame with Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park, Xbox LIVE gold members should send a friend request to Gamertag Mike Linkinpark and be online Friday June 26th 30 minutes before the 4:00 pm EST (1:oo pm PST) start time. You can also follow the game on Twitter.

Linkin Park contributed “What I’ve Done” off their Minutes to Midnight album to the original Transformers live action movie. Their new hit single “New Divide” is on the Revenge of the Fallen soundtrack.

More details from the press release follow the break.

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After last week’s stellar review of inFamous, Zero Punctuation pits Cole McGrath and his thunder god impression against Protoype. The main character Alex Mercer is more of a “you are who you eat,” type of guy.

I thought this comparison piece of InFamous and Prototype was rather inevitable actually. Early on in their development cycles I often became confused over the two games only being able to straighten it out because one main character eats people and the other… doesn’t. What with all the government interference in the natural order of things coming back to bite them in the ass, in Prototype’s case literally, they seem very similar at first glance.

A more detailed Impression of inFamous is available on Gaming Today.

The Cult of Rapture, 2K Games’ official information arm for the incredibly popular Bioshock games leaked some truly interesting images along with a blog describing the process of evolution that the series’ big adversary and future protagonist is going through to prepare for the upcoming Bioshock 2.

Between the first BioShock and the sequel, you’ve seen a lot of concept art for Big Daddies. The logic behind this concept art went beyond different designs and suit combinations. The artists had to imagine what the very first Big Daddy would have on him — this Big Daddy had to feel like he was a rough draft or a work-in-progress, an amalgam of Big Daddies to come. The first Big Daddy was a test case, and in making the perfect prototype, 2K Marin drafted many, many prototypes themselves.

Since the new game places players in the role of the Big Daddy prototype its interesting to see the possible choices the developers considered. You can find links to the images below. I particularly like the hulking gray suited Big Daddy design myself, but the near-final draft is also included showing a more svelte, streamlined and human looking character.

Tom Felton, better known to some many as Draco Malfoy, leads gamers into a virtual Hogwarts for the Making of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince part one. Most of your favorite actors and actresses from the movies are in the video including Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), Bonny Wright (Jinny Weasley), and Emma Watson (Hermione Granger). You’ll get glimpses of new story elements and characters; the most fantastic of them being the castle itself.

You’ll hear from EA developers Kevin Tuite, Art Director, and Chris Roberts, Lead Designer, of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince game as well as Executive Producer Jonathan Bunney as they talk about the new virtual Hogwarts built from all the information from the books and films. Gamers will be able to fully explore the castle and the grounds for the first time. You also play seeker, mix potions, and duel other students in addition to completing the storyline.