The first glimpse of Mini Ninjas box art has been captured for the upcoming game. Guide Hiro, the world’s littlest ninja on an adventure of massive proportions as you save the world from evil samurai turning animals into mindless minions. Having ninjas as heroes versus evil Samurai seems backward to me but the trailer looks good.

The Mini Ninjas -
Where have the animals gone?
September comes soon…

Mini Ninjas will sneaking up on the PC, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360 and the DS September 8, 2009.

Yes, I know. They’re dropping the Call of Duty from the title right? Well, maybe not.

According to Robert Bowling, community manager for Infinity Ward (a.k.a. FourZeroTwo), Call of Duty is definitely part of the new title. How can we be sure? Well, he shared this picture with us via his Twitter account.

See, now THAT is definitive. I had thought it strange that Infinity Ward or Activision would remove the CoD title from the game, since that links it into a seriously well-known franchise. Sure, it might confuse the issue of which Call of Duty game is coming next, but I’ll bet it will be totally worth it.

I can assure you all that most of us here at Gaming Today will be available online for you to shoot at on day one of Modern Warfare 2. I know that you will all be happy about that opportunity.

Today EA LA officially announced the conclusion to the Tiberium series, Command and Conquer 4. Players will finally witness Kane’s master plan come together or fail utterly as the bitter rivals Global Defense Initiative (GDI) and the Brotherhood of Nod race to save mankind from destruction.

“Command & Conquer is a powerful franchise with an amazing 15-year legacy. We are thrilled to bring the dramatic Tiberium saga to a conclusion in Command & Conquer 4. This game is designed to give fans all the answers they’ve been looking for,” said Mike Glosecki, Lead Producer of Command & Conquer 4 at EA Los Angeles. “With its objective-based multiplayer mode, persistent player progression and all-in-one mobile base, players will experience Command & Conquer like never before.”

Much of the information on C&C4 is being kept under wraps and doled out as exclusive content. For more details on Command & Conquer 4 make sure to catch BattleCast PrimeTime on the July 24th episode. They’ll be revealing exclusive information C&C4. The first glimpse of the game will be the premier cinematic trailer aired exclusively on the July 23rd episode of Gametrailers TV on SPIKE TV. The ETA for Command & Conquer 4 is sometime in 2010. Read the full article »

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.

Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires is offering players free armor upgrades and bonus music tracks. These new armor sets are available in edit mode for the tactical action game.

This week’s downloadable content sets include:

• Kempo Armor Set (for men)
• Artemis Armor Set (for women)
• Royal Armor Set (for men)
• Queen Armor Set (for women)
• Additional BGM Track Pack #1

You can grab these free content packs form the PlayStation Network Store and Xbox Live Marketplace.

There’s been a fair bit of speculation about MechWarrior the last couple of days, due to some short video clips that appeared on the net. The videos really didn’t show much, just a quick look at some unmarked mechs. Still, excited discussions ensued.

Fans debated the type of mechs, armament of mechs, and what the videos actually meant. Well, the speculation can all come to a screeching halt now.

According to IGN AU, Jordan Weisman is behind the revival of the franchise. If don’t remember Weisman, he was the co-founder of FASA, the company that created the BattleTech universe. He also founded Smith and Tinker, the company that acquired the rights to MechWarrior from Microsoft in 2007.

You’ll find more details on the next MechWarrior after the break.

Read the full article »

John Harris, a writer over on the industry news site/blog Gamasutra,  writes a regular series of articles entitled Game Design Essentials. These long and exhaustively researched story discusses his position on many topics important to modern game design and the lessons learned along the way.

His latest installment discusses 20 RPGs that all designers should be familiar with and why. The feature article is interesting from the perspective of someone who has studied game design and as someone who has been using RPGs for storytelling and  enjoyment over the years. Aspiring designers could do far worse than to dig through this fairly dense statement of information covering RPGs from the classic pen-and-paper Dungeons & Dragons through the evolution of Wizardry, Ultima, Wasteland and more contemporary games like World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy and the Elder Scrolls titles.

You can check out the entire article here.

OXM and Joystiq are revealing that the upcoming controversial sequel to Left 4 Dead will try and entice players who maybe aren’t quite as enthused about the quick turn around between last year’s initial release and this year’s Southern bound sequel with some nice demo shaped cookies..

It seems that the upcoming demo of the game will be available to players who pre-order the title before it hits general outlets. The details are sparse at the moment but this early access will likely be to the same content the rest of the world will get when the multiplayer demo hits Steam and Xbox Live, just a teensy bit earlier.

I understand Valve wanting to feed the L4D 2 hype, but as far as pre-order incentives go this one just seems to be a bit too lame duck to me. Offer an exclusive level or weapon or heck, maybe give us access to a member of the original game in our L4D 2 play, but giving out the same demo just earlier seems like an epic undersell of a much anticipated/debated sequel.

You may recall that in the Zero Punctuation: inFamous vs. Prototype video review, Yahtzee said he couldn’t honestly choose a winner because they were equally fun. Then he issued a challenge to the developers saying he’d base which game was best on whichever studio submitted “the best picture of the other game’s main character wearing women’s bra.”

To everyone’s surprise and delight, both Radical and Sucker Punch took up the gauntlet. The die is cast, the submissions weighed and a winner has been declared.
Read the full article »

While Guybrush Threepwood is returning in a new title and a relaunched classic later this week from Telltale Games and Lucasarts as Eva mentioned, today the big news was regarding the return of a number of classic Lucasarts Adventure games (The Dig and LOOM being the best news) and more than a few of their not-quite-as-old franchise action titles like Star Wars: Republic Commando, Star Wars Battlefront II and the various Indiana Jones titles are making their way to Valve’s digital distribution system, Steam on July 8th.

The complete annotated list includes:

• Armed and Dangerous™
• Indiana Jones® and the Fate of Atlantis
• Indiana Jones® and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure
• LEGO® Indiana Jones: The Original Adventure
• LOOM™
• Star Wars Battlefront® II
• Star Wars Republic Commando®
• Star Wars Starfighter™
• The Dig®
• Thrillville®: Off the Rails™

It definitely looks like Lucasarts is trying to recapture the the glory days of the company before it became the “bad” Star Wars game and LEGO tie-in company. The games will be released on the Xbox 360 via Live! as well.

There are a few more games I’d love to see make this list like the Maniac Mansion games, or Grim Fandango – by Tim Schafer – lately the mind behind Psychonauts and Brutal Legend.  Till then however I think I might just consider picking up another copy of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and LOOM.