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I know that a lot of people were a bit “meh” when God of War III was announced yesterday at the Sony press conference, and I understand why they were, because we all already knew it was coming. However, invoking the name of Kratos is enough to get me all bubbly, giggly and twitterpatted all at the same time. Who cares if we already knew it was coming? Its God of War III people, and may I say that Kratos looks dead sexy in next-gen. So sexy in fact that I would eat Ramen noodles from here until release just to be able to afford a PS3 for the game. There, I finally admitted my devotion to the lusciously brutal Spartan despite his heart being blacker than an abandoned coal mine. Admission is the first step to recovery, ya know.

Anyway, sometime this year expect to see more goodies regarding God of War III because it will supposedly be out sometime around Q1 2009 - if rumors are to be believed. No matter, I would wait until Q4 for it as long as it was finished and worthy of his godliness.

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Gaming Today is in the trenched at E3 this week, and yesterday may have been pretty exciting, what with FFXIII being released for the Xbox 360, Resident Evil 5 getting a release date, all the Halo Wars and Gears of War Footage (will be posted soon) and other nice nuggets - it is only going to get better today.
The Nintendo press conference will start off the morning, and the day will close with the Activision private party (away from E3) taking place around 7:00 pm PST. So for those of us on EST, we can expect some info to start arriving 10pm this evening as far as that event goes. Again, Jonathan and Shawn will be blogging live, so expect more information throughout the day and into the evening.

Meanwhile, what are you excited to hear about? Personally, I am curious to see what else Bethesda has to offer other than more Fallout 3 info, and Activision will more than likely be talking up the Guitar Hero franchise and possibly be giving us the first real look at World Tour. They released a press statement yesterday during the Microsoft event about the new Metallica coming to Legends of Rock, so hopefully the guys will have more information on that later. What I am anxious to hear about is the new Wolfenstein title because there is nothing more fun than shooting Nazis ate up with the occult bug.

As far as the Sony press conference goes, I am keeping my fingers crossed that God of War 3 is mentioned or at least shown in rough form. Of course, I am a total Kratos groupie, and anything regarding a future title starring the angry Spartan piques my interest very much. I am sure we will also hear more about “Home” and LittleBigPlanet and many other titles along with future firmware updates coming, so keep your eyes peeled.

As if Vader and Yoda weren’t enough to get gamers excited about Soul Calibur IV, rumor now has it that Kratos from God of War may also be showing up in the game. Quartermann, EGM’s gossip guy, has heard rumblings that the infamous pasty-faced God-killer may be showing up exclusively for the PS3. That’s awesome by itself, but it also begs the question of what the Xbox 360 might get in return. Master Chief with an energy sword? Marcus Fenix using the Lancer’s chainsaw? I don’t know, but odds are it’ll be equal parts ridiculous and badass.

Via 1UP

Yes, the rumors of what’s in store for E3 just keep on rolling about the internet like tumbleweeds in a dust storm or some other old-timey analogy. One of the latest of these rumors indicates that God of War III may be making an appearance at this year’s E3. Apparently, a representative from Sony leaked this information at the Interactive and Digital Entertainment Festival in Paris. Considering the last three games in the series have done extremely well for themselves, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see Kratos’ pasty, God-killing mug show up at E3.

Via Eurogamer

It seems we can’t go a week without God of War creator, David Jaffe, posting an raving-but-surprisingly-insightful rant on his blog. This week, the game developer aims his critical eye at anyone who’s made a Marvel game, and he’s not happy with they way they’re handling their licenses:

“As a huge comic and game fan- and as a game designer as well- I really hope Marvel stops ONLY using the HOW TO MAKE A MARVEL GAME template that seems to demand: Open City, Hero Powers, Recycled Missions ad nauseam, and a few Unique things tossed in. And I hope they stop because this template- in most cases- goes against the very thing that makes the comics so special: story.”

He goes on to argue that comic-based games would probably fare better if the story took a more linear approach, in order to focus on the plot more. To his credit, he does have a point. Almost anything based on comic books tend to go down in quality the more they deviate from the source material, whether it’s a game, a movie, or a TV show. But the real message here is clear: David Jaffe really wants to make a Marvel game. Personally, I think that would work out pretty well. Hell, take out Kratos, put in Wolverine, and you’re halfway to a game right there.

Via David Jaffe’s Blog

For some reason, I’m always interested in the different routes developers look at in the course of designing a game. In David Jaffe’s latest blog post, he discusses what goes into coming up with a game’s title: a topic brought up by an action figure line called simply “Police Vs. Bad Guyz.” Near the end of the post though, he reveals quite a few names that were considered for some of his most well known names. Twisted Metal could’ve been called the self-explanatory, “Cars and Rockets.” God of War was going to simply titled “?,” as in the Greek symbol for “omega” — which now has me convinced that Prince was on their marketing team. Even Kratos was originally going to be called “Dominus.” It’s like imagining some Bizarro universe where cats collect nuts and squirrels chase mice.

Via David Jaffe’s Blog

Attention all PS3 owners who currently also own Guitar Hero III for their gaming system: I officially hate you now more than ever before. Okay, maybe “hate” is too strong of a word, let’s just say I “envy” you now more than ever before and leave it at that.

According to Shacknews, a God of War-inspired track will be available as a free download on Thursday, June 5 for those who own a PS3 version of GH III: Legends of Rock. This little bit of news was garnered from a PlayStation Underground mailing although no additional details were provided in the mailing.

You know what would be very cool? If PS3 users could eventually download a character resembling Kratos for the game. Not only would that be just frickin awesome, but he could have the most badass guitar around. It could have Medusa’s head at the top of the neck, a Taurus’ horns coming out the sides of the body, and the color of it of course would be blood red. During Star Power Mode, his appearance could change into “Rage of the Gods” and he could be all evil looking and aflame - and after the song was over, he could jump out into the audience and decapitate a fan or two and then get a point burst for getting a good rogering from a few skanky groupies.

Awesome. Just Awesome.

Via: Shacknews

Twenty Sided has an article up on how have flawed main characters can be fun. The example used here is the lead character from BioWare’s Jade Empire. For those of you who have always wanted to play it but haven’t got around to it; you might want to skip this article. However for those gamers who understand the inside joke, this is a fun piece of truism.

Personal, I like a little roughness in both my NPCs and player characters. It makes them more realistic and easier to relate to. It also helps to build tension in a story. If everything single obstacle is too easily surmounted, I tend to lose interest quickly.  This especially applies to RPGs and games with RPG elements.

The unstoppable Kratos retains a human touch as he mourns the loss of his family. Similarly, the new Viking: Battle for Asgard features a less than perfect main character as well. Not all player characters are as clueless as the lead character in Jade Empire, but it’s nice to have three dimensional characters that have some room for growth.

via Twenty Sided

Not much has been divulged regarding God of War III other than your normal “coming soon” and “we are working on it” sound bites from Sony. Not even a concrete release date has even been hinted around at other than “late 2009″.

Has this stopped the speculation or rumors? Heck no, because Amazon has it up for preorder right now and are listing the release date as March 2, 2009. That is 10 months from now. Take this release date with a grain of salt until official word comes down from Sony, but check it out nonetheless.

Also, I am hoping against all hope, that the cover art for the game that they are showing is just temporary because Kratos is just too bleeping cool not to be featured on the cover of his own game.

Check back with us often for updates.

Thanks for the Tip: Mrjuandrful

Everybody who has ever played a video game can attest to the fact that the majority of the female characters in them are usually not horrid beasts whose appearance is so revolting that you want to gouge your eyes out. Usually, if a female character is insulting to our senses it is because they are either a zombie, some sort of enemy we are suppose to detest or they are the overly plump mother figure. The heroines, or the damsels in distress are usually pretty easy on the eyes – for a pixilated figure – and the fandom that surrounds Lara Croft, for example, can attest to this.For years on end, men have had their Dead or Alive chicks, Lara, the Final Fantasy babes, any female in Soul Calibur, and pretty much the whole gambit of scantily clad women in the RPG genre. This has always been okay with me, because I am not a prude and I understand that developers and the demographic that they cater too are mostly male. Men like to look at voluptuous women oozing with sexuality that can handle a broadsword with as much tender loving care as they would a helpless kitten. It is a scientific fact that men are stimulated visually when it comes to the opposite sex – therefore, if a game developer wants to include a female character in a game that wears nothing more than a thong, pasties, thigh-high boots and fishnet stockings – go for it! It does not offend me in the slightest.

I do however, have one request from developers: Why not make your main protagonists just as easy on the eyes as the women? I am not asking you to put them in a codpiece or have them in costumes that make them look like nothing more than a reject from a Village People casting call. I am not even asking for you to make them “really, really, ridiculously good-looking”. I just think it would be wonderful to have nice looking men who are just as easy on the eyes as their pixilated female counterparts. Handsome heroes in video games are few and far between and while Duke Nukem may be a bad ass, his resemblance to Howie Long only disgusts us to be quite honest. Solid Snake may be one of the most awesome heroes of his genre, but he is no Sam Elliot.

Because of the lack of hunky men in video games, I set out to find some that I personally though might fit the “handsome” mold. I shared my findings with some female friends who are also gamers, and they agreed with me on my selections. With more and more women taking up gaming as a hobby, if you are going to include a hot chick, make her counterpart just as hot. I have picked some of the hunkiest gaming heroes that have so far graced our TV screens, and while there are not that many, the ones I have chosen – to me anyway – are the ones who are easiest on the eyes.

Read the full article

As Jonathan reported earlier, the new (free!) map pack for Unreal Tournament 3 is now available for download from the PlayStation Store. You’ll get Facing Worlds and two other maps I couldn’t care less about because Facing Worlds is the greatest thing ever, courtesy of Epic Games and Midway. That sure is awfully nice of them, and it makes me wonder if we’ll get to see a similar pack for free on Xbox 360 once the game gets moved over to Microsoft’s box.

Turok also is getting the downloadable content treatment today, although it’s not free. $4.99 will net you five new maps (although that statement might not hold true if you don’t view changes in time of day as constituting a “new” map).

$8.99 is the asking price of the new flOw bundle, which simply includes the full game and its expansion pack. Nothing new about the actually content, but if you want to take the plunge with flOw, this is the way to do it.

For the next two weeks (until April 15) you’ll find Warhawk on sale for just $29.99, $10 cheaper than it normally costs. You can use that saved money to buy some of the downloadable content that’s been released for the game since last August, or maybe you can just change paces and pick up that flOw bundle.

Videos, themes, Rock Band tracks, and an update to High Stakes: Poker Edition are also new on the Store. Hit the break for the full list of content. Read the full article

God of War: Chains of Olympus
Developer: Ready at Dawn Studios
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Price: $49.99
Platform: PlayStation Portable
Category: Action/Adventure
ESRB: “M” for Mature
Release Date: 3/04/2008

Kratos the Spartan has a really bad life. Sure he’s a marauding, enemy eviscerating unstoppable war machine all by himself; but it’s got to suck to be “the cleaner” for the Olympian Gods.

Chains of Olympus is the first title in the God of War series to grace Sony’s portable gaming system the PSP but the game actually serves not as a continuation of the Playstation 2 series, but as a prequel that details his existence pre-God of War as he moves from battlefield to battlefield cleaning up after the messes made by his deific masters.

You push Kratos through hordes of foes all the while whipping your trademark Blades of Chaos – a gift from patron god Ares – and popping their cherries until they sprout fountains of red, green and white orbs. Fans of the series will find nothing unexpected here and while this game was obviously created to take advantage of the handheld’s graphics and controls it does not alter the gameplay into one that is more conducive to pick-up and put-down play. This is a good thing though because once I started playing I found myself glued to the PSP and tethered to my power outlet lest my battery die on me mid blood orgy. Chains of Olympus feels like a God of War game through and through.
Read the full article

After reading the initial press release from Sony announcing the launch of God of War: Chains of Olympus I got all giddy like a catholic schoolgirl until the reality of no longer owning a PSP brought my dreams crashing back into the horrible land of reality.

You see, my boyfriend’s cousin is currently in Iraq serving with the Marines, and we sent our PSP over to him and his buddies in a care-package. Since then, I have not missed our PSP too much, but now that Kratos is back in Chain of Olympus I am really wanting to get another PSP just for this game.

Imagine, if you will, my shock and utter awe when I looked at some of the screens from Sony depicting the red and ultra-sexy God of War PSP Bundle coming in June. I swear to the God of War himself, that thing is so sexy and so drool inspiring that I would marry the damn thing in a civil ceremony and broadcast the wedding night on YouTube if I were able to get my hands on one.

Ok, all joking aside, it definitely made my knees weaken a little, and the thought of being able to get my hands on another Kratos adventure before God of War III comes out next year, was just absolute sensory overload.

Anyway, fans of the greatest fictional hero known to mythology, go out to your local retailer now and get this game. Its waiting for you.

Via: Press Release

Read the full article

Gaming Nexus’ Charles Husemann has put out an opinion piece questioning the relevance of Duke Nukem in a time when Gorden Freeman, Kratos and Masterchief have become the new heroic icons. The article asks the question - Is this walking cliché straight from the first Bush administration still a character we can identify with, or is he too much of an overgrown boy scout with heavy weapons?

Gaming Nexus: While there is some nostalgia to the character he’s a product of a by-gone era and I don’t think people are going to settle for such a poor shell of a character any more. Let’s be honest, at this point Duke Nukem feels a bit like the creepy 30 year old guy who’s hitting on high school girls at the mall.

Even the multiplayer aspect of Duke Nukem has been left far behind with today’s destructible environments and complex multilevel scenarios.

Duke Nukem 3D also had some of the best multiplayer I’ve ever played (we still fire it up at LAN parties from time to time) but the bar has been raised significantly by the Halo and Call of Duty games.  Sure you can’t shrink anyone and then step on them in these games but I can kill people with a flying toilet in Half Life 2 and that’s just as good.

By the time they update the game and the character, the Duke will be unrecognizable.

Read Charles Husemann’s biting, satirical look at Duke Nukem on Gaming Nexus .

We have heard that God of War III is not coming until late 2009, but according to the instruction manual for Chains of Olympus, it is “coming soon”. Now, soon in terms of video game development can mean anything from a couple of months to a couple of years because lets face it, devs and pubs have their own concept of time that does not mesh well with ours. Being gamers, we have come to accept this and just try and go about our merry way until something we want finally comes to fruition; but why Sony would want to rub salt in our eyes so far in advance is just beyond cruel.

The one thing I can take to heart over this is the fact that because my beloved boyfriend (note the sarcasm) refuses to budge on the whole buying a PS3 thing for me, I can sit back in gloating satisfaction that when GoW III is released he will be miserable. Not only is the GoW franchise one of my all-time favorites, it is his as well and he should be smart enough to know that the GoW franchise is, and will always be a Sony exclusive. As a matter of fact, he is replaying GoW II for the third time because he is bored until Condemned 2 comes out on March 11th, and when his brain wakes-up and comes to the conclusion that he will not be able to step into Krato’s really big shoes until we purchase a PS3, he will be one very sad jackass.

Good. He deserves to be miserable over it.

Thanks: Videogaming247

Another PSP Entertainment Pack is headed our way, this time sporting a God of War title and a deep red PSP with Kratos’ mug slapped on the back. The PSP will be (supposedly) limited edition, and come alongside a copy of God of War: Chains of Olympus, a copy of Superbad on UMD (a very funny movie, if you haven’t seen it), and a voucher to download Syphon Filter: Combat Ops from the PlayStation Store for free. The bundle will be priced at $199.99.

Chains of Olympus is still releasing on March 4, with the God of War Entertainment Pack hitting sometime this June. I think the red looks great, but I don’t think I’d actually want to play anything on it. It seems like it should be in a museum or something. But the bundle is nice enough that I almost regret upgrading to a PSP Lite a few months ago.

via PlayStation.Blog

Metal Gear Solid fans who have been waiting for Guns of the Patriots to release will be glad to hear that a perfect bundle will be released to coincide with the game’s release – an 80GB PS3, a copy of MGS4, and a DualShock 3 controller for $499.99. Sure, it doesn’t equal big savings for you, but you’ll guarantee that you’ll have a DualShock controller and a copy of the game.

Of course, if you do opt for this bundle and pre-order the game to gain access to the Metal Gear Online beta, you’ll end up with two copies of the game. Unless you cancel the pre-order after you get your beta access, of course.

via PlayStation.Blog

News out of the ongoing Destination PlayStation – a Sony event for the company to meet with retailers and third party teams – brings word that the long awaited DualShock 3 will finally be available in North America this April. According to PlayStation.Blog, the controller’s rumble feature will be compatible with more than 100 games, including Uncharted, Ratchet & Clank Future, and Metal Gear Solid 4.

They didn’t peg a specific date, or if they did they’re simply not sharing it with us. This puts me in a bit of a conundrum since I don’t know if I should hold off on playing through my remaining PS3 “to play” list so that I can experience it with rumble. What am I to do?

The one thing I do know for sure, though, is that with a $54.99 price tag I’ll be telling a GameStop employee, “One please.”

In addition to the demo on the PlayStation store, there’s a new trailer out for God of War: Chains of Olympus. Kratos is still larger than life even on the PSP. Enjoy a clip of gameplay footage of your favorite Spartan. It’s looking like yet another reason to love the PSP.

God of War: Chains of Olympus will be unleashed on NA March 4, 2008 and EU March 28, 2008.

via FileFront

The gaming world has it’s share of cool heroes: Solid Snake, Kratos, Samus. But for every great character, there’s almost always another character who is the exact oppposite. Thus, Cracked.com has compiled a list of “The 15 Most Annoying Video Game Characters (From Otherwise Great Games).” Basically, the article lists several of the worst characters in gaming history and then makes fun of them; which all makes for a fun read. Some of the worst of the worst are here too: Tingle, Navi, Baby Mario, that damn dog from Duck Hunt. Anyone who has played games for awhile will instantly get flashbacks of wanting to strangle some characters that are memorable for all the wrong reasons.

Via Cracked.com