With the next Bond film dead in the water until MGM gets its act together, the world isn’t going to be getting any new Bond action for quite some time (even Jeffery Deaver penned book is a good ways off). Except in the form of a videogame; Blood Stone and GoldenEye 007 are all we’re going to get. With that fact in mind, I wondered how important the games were becoming to not only the mythos of Bond, but the franchise as a whole.

Julian Widdow, Executive Producer at Activison Blizzard UK, gave me an answer when I got a chance to talk with him about the upcoming Bond games:

Yes, I do, and I know the producers at EON feel the same way. Although cinematic releases are the lifeblood of the property, games are becoming increasingly important, and the level of involvement we’ve had with the production team over at EON is unprecedented in the history of Bond games. This authenticity is clear when you play the games, and is important to maintain the integrity of the property.

It’s interesting, and heartening, to hear that not just the guys working on the Bond games, but EON (the production company behind Bond) is as behind the games as they are the films. I think gaming is a great way to experience Bond, and having the same attention, care, and passion that are put into the films also put into the games can only lead to great things.

According to the Financial Times, Sony is set to announce a music and video service to compete with iTunes for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable. The report states that the service may be revealed as early as today.

According to the report, “sources in the media industry” are saying that the service will be subscription based, and will be unveiled at the IFA technology show in Berlin. The source points to the PS3 and PSP for the launch, with Sony adding other devices — such as Bravia TVs, mobile phones, and Sony laptops — in the future.

As for when the service will launch, the sources say it won’t be available until 2011.

Report: Sony to introduce iTunes Competitor on PS3, PSP [1UP - Thanks, Vallanthaz!]

When it comes to super heroes, the most successful are able to recreate the element of the “everyman.” While almost all of us want to be Superman, Batman, Wolverine or, uh, Mr. Fantastic (was that just me?), those guys aren’t necessarily relatable. That’s part of Spider-Man’s charm; Peter Parker taps into the young, awkward teen in all of us. Being able to be him and do his spidery things has always been a fun part of his games, for it lets us get a little closer to that fantasy.

And that’s one of the neat things about Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions — it lets us play as not only one Spider-Man, but four different Spider-Men. There’s quite a bit of variety here, and it’s nice to see that Activision and Beenox are bringing something different to the different Spidey identities.

I’ve played around with the game for a bit, so swing after the jump for my impressions.

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, PC)
Developer: Beenox
Publisher: Activision
To be released: September 7, 2010

By now the idea behind Shattered Dimensions is pretty well known. Take four different Spider-Man universes, toss them together, and go to town. It’s cool, for sure, to be playing one version of classic Amazing Spider-Man one minute, and the next to be diving off a building as Spider-Man 2099. However, there is some reason to this rhyme, and it seems Mysterio has broken up the Tablet of Chaos and Order. It’s caused all sorts of bad news to go down, and the arachnoid Madam Web has tasked, well, all of the Spider-Man to retrieve the pieces and undo the problems Mysterio started. It’s all typical comic book stuff, and seems inoffensive.

While many past Spider-Man games opted for the open world approach by re-creating New York City and letting Spidey roam about as he pleases, Shattered Dimensions doesn’t exactly work that way considering they have four different universes to work with. Shattered Dimensions is strictly a level-based game, broken up into universes and in chapters. One weird side effect is that because there is no open world, the whole free-swinging portion of Spider-Man is gone. Considering I had seen only a small portion of the game, I’m hopeful that there will be more swinging opportunities in the game, as I didn’t really have many.

However, swinging aside, each of the four different universes offer slightly different aesthetics and gameplay. While all of the versions of Spider-Man share the same general fighting combos and spider abilities, there is still plenty of variation. For example, the Ultimate Spider-Man level took place in a S.H.E.I.L.D hangar, with a battle going on between Carnage’s minions and S.H.E.I.L.D bots. It was a three-way battle with Spidey, who was chasing down Carnage. With fire and alien flesh all over the place, everything took on a reddish hue. Ultimate can use his Spidey sense, and can also use a rage mode that will increase his powers. That level ended with a boss battle against Carnage. Between first-person punches and kicking his ass into some jet engines, the Carnage fight was usually just mash away at him and jumping out of the way at the last second. Generally, Ultimate is all about the action, with a little bit more focus on the punches.

Amazing, however, is all about the web action. In his mission, Spidey was chasing after Juggernaut, who in his escape destroyed some gas pipes to cause a fire. Spider-Man, the pro at randomly falling into the wrong situation at the wrong time, found himself in the midst of a bunch of enemies in the middle of a construction site. By swinging over and saving the nearby construction workers, I was able to get past. My demo ended there, but this stage offered a little of the free swinging I had been hoping for, as well as showed off the web abilities Amazing could use. His web could transform in fists and hammers, and the combat felt a little bit more distance based than Ultimate.

Spider-Man 2099’s major hook is threefold. First of all, each of his attacks are a little faster and much more acrobatic, while in the end they do basically the same thing as the others. However, while Ultimate has the ability to boost his power, 2099 has the ability to slow down time. While this is great for some of the fights, in which Spidey goes all Viewtiful Joe against his foes, it’s even better in some of the free fall sections. New York City is much taller now, and 2099 has the ability to sort of glide down from the top of buildings. In a race against a game exclusive version of Hobgoblin (redesigned to look like a metallic purple gargoyle) Spider-Man is tasked with dodging building shrapnel and other bits thrown his way by Hobgoblin. After this free fall, I was treated to another fight in which Hobgoblin would throw pumpkins at me, and I’d swing them back. 

Finally, Spider-Man Noir offered the most interesting version of the webbed on. Based upon the Noir universe, everything is very much in shades of gray, black, and muddy yellow. Activision took some liberties with this version, as he has some extra web abilities he doesn’t have in the comics, such as web swing. This is less important, however, as Noir is focused on stealth. He is a capable fighter one-on-one, but any more than that, and his health takes a dive. Thankfully, in the shadows his health will respawn, so Noir takes on an almost Batman approach to crime fighting: hide in the shadows, and take out your threats from above. His mission was about saving some prisoners locked up in a train yard, and after taking some of Hammerhead’s minions, it was as easy as swinging off to the nearby safezone.

Each of the four versions of Spider-Man offered quite a bit of variety, and it was enjoyable to see how each universe represents what is basically the same ideas and imagery. Most of the charm comes from teasing out the different elements of the game, and working through them to 

Odd for most tiles coming out, the Wii version is exactly the same as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game. Other than the obvious drop in textures and jump in aliasing, the games are exactly the same save some additional motion control. All of the attacks are with the press of the B-trigger, and depending on the angle of the Wiimote up or down, the attacks will be heavy or weak. Shake the nunchuck for a throw, press C to jump, and + or – will access the Spidey Sense and special abilities. It took me a little while to figure things out, and it does fell little complicated. However, these look like they will redeem themselves with other Wii-specific opportunities. In Noir, for example, Spider-Man will have to point where he wants his webbing to shoot on the barred doors holding the prisoners, and you have to yank them off. In Ultimate, during the boss fight with Carnage, players will have to dodge his attacks and throw in punches using motion control. It’s a nice addition, I’ll give it that.

Coming away from Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, there are things I certainly like. I like that there are different art directions and looks to each of the worlds, and I like that it gives us a feel of each universe. I like that Spider-Man plays out a little bit in each universe. I am a little disappointed that web swinging seems to take a slight back seat to the combat, but the combat is at least varied and fun. If the whole of the game is enjoyable and dynamic, I can see this being a great sort of game to blast through after a day of work or on a Saturday afternoon. Finger’s crossed.

Yesterday we posted a trailer for PS3 exclusive Malicious, a downloadable title from Japan that is looking incredibly sexy. The reaction was almost unanimously positive, so here’s a huge bunch of screenshots for you to gawp at!

It’s really surprising that this is a PSN title as it has all the look of a retail game. Hopefully the gameplay matches the confidence of the visuals, although it would appear we have little to fear on that front if the trailer was anything to go by. 

This is a PSN title to watch, that’s for damn sure. 

[Via AndriaSang]

And by “urban jungle”, we mean it literally. Famitsu scans reveal the SCEJ-developed PlayStation 3 game to be called “Tokyo Jungle“. The scans show screenshots of various wild animals stalking the streets of a post-disaster Tokyo, doing what wild animals are wont to do. Perhaps Sony felt that Afrika wasn’t dangerous enough.

The game promises “hunting action”, and two modes of play: “Story” and “Survival”. PlayStation Network support is also a thing that will happen. And the screenshots show a distinct lack of human beings. Will we be playing as an animal?! Sounds like Primal Rage, except not as dumb.

By now you’re probably asking “but what kinds of animals will we see in the Tokyo Jungle?” Well, the pictures show elephants, lions, tigers, hippos, giraffes, gazelles, chimpanzees, porcupines, ostriches, rabbits, crocodiles, what looks like a Tasmanian Tiger, a Shiba Inu, Beagles, and…a Pomeranian. Are those dinosaurs in the back of one of the scans?!

And here I thought Catherine was the only weird Japanese game I’d be caring about this year. Perhaps more details will come out around the Tokyo Game Show.

Tokyo Jungle in Development for the PlayStation 3 [Gaming Everything via Jin115]

No, that not the “hint” above. That would be a full on reveal. The hint comes from the latest issue of Arcadia magazine, a Japanese publication focused on the modern day arcade scene.

“Arcade scene.” Sigh.

The scan shows the silhouette of a skateboard and a pair of roller blades set beside some text teasing future characters of Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade. That’s a pretty big hint. Unless Capcom is planning to reveal two all new Streer Fighter characters that utilize these pedestrian forms of travel, then it’s got to be Yun and Yang.

This pleases me. From a “science of the roster” perspective, it may be a but redundant to have Abel, Gen, Fei Long, Yun, and Yang all in the same game, though from a fan’s perspective, it’s still exciting to think that the SF3 twins may be on the verge of a comeback. It would be even better if they introduced a third brother to Yun and Yang, maybe an older, cooler brother on a segway…

Yun and Yang likely in Super Street Fighter 4 arcade- [Eventhubs]

Recettear’s an undoubtedly unusual sort of RPG. It places you not in charge of an adventuring party out to save the world, but in the place of the shopkeepers who supply said adventuring groups, in the name of profit, capitalism, and debt-reduction.

Strangely enough, you won’t be picking up this indie game at any brick-and-mortar store. Instead, Recettear, the ultimate ItemStop-simulation will be available via the future of game-buying: digital distribution. Put simply, you can get Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale on Steam, Impulse [Thanks for the correction, bVork!] and GamersGate starting on September 10th for the very favorable price of $19.99. Better still, if you preorder via Steam you’ll get 10% off, putting it at $17.99.

Said Andrew Dice of Carpe Fulgur, the indie localization group that picked up the game:

“We are happy – almost to the point of delirium, really – to be on Steam…This is the first time an independently-made game from Japan has appeared on the Steam service. This will allow the game to reach an audience of millions that otherwise would’ve been closed to it, and we have high hopes that Steam users will enjoy the game for the unique gem that it is.”

If you’re still cagey about dropping some gil zenny golds dollars on the game, demos and trailers are available, also via Steam, and right here.

Dead Rising 2: Case Zero has a lot of fun (and funny) weapons, but there’s no topping the moose head, in my mind. The electric rake and dual-chainsaw paddle thing tie for second place.

We learned about the supposedly magical new Xbox 360 controller, heard the release dates for a lot of great Xbox LIVE Arcade titles, talked about a certain puffball who is made of string, had a triple-attack of reviews, and some other stuff happened on 8/31/10.

Destructoid Originals:
Destructoid’s community meetup plans for PAX Prime 10!
The ten worst videogame haircuts EVER!
Teh Bias: Blog recap

Reviews:
Review: Ufouria: The Saga
Review: Valkyria Chronicles II
Review: Dead Rising 2: Case Zero

Contests:
We’re giving away 4 Samsung Galaxy S Epic phones!

News:
Rumor: Microsoft may be making a better directional pad
Amazon has Wii deals all day long
Super Meat Boy releasing on XBLA October 20th
Puzzle Quest 2 coming to PSP
Mafia II ‘Jimmy’s Vendetta’ coming September 7
Dodonpachi Resurrection on the iPhone: 30k in 4 days
EA defends online pass plan
Yakuza PSP demo for you, not just Japan
Xbox 360 D-Pad redesign confirmed
New Split/Second content, paid and free, hits this week
EEDAR: Xbox Live price hike is ‘incredible value’
Smackdown 2011 pre-order incentives make their entrance
Free App of the Day: Spark It Up
Professor Layton’s men vs women San Francisco challenge
Kirby’s Epic Yarn inspired by stop-motion movie
Ubisoft: Only triple-A games are profitable
Pirate-y ‘Barnacle Bay’ content for Sims 3 announced
Microsoft: Kinect is as fast as pushing a button
Medal of Honor undermines the values of New Zealand
Kirby’s Epic Yarn designed to ‘appeal to everyone’
Ubisoft teasing something with film poster knock-offs
PS3 exclusive Malicious looks pretty damn sexy
AMD kills the ATI name for their cards and chips
Pinball FX 2 releasing in October as a free download
Ghost of Sparta special edition PSP isn’t a PSPgo
Wii Balance Board supported massage game Love Press++
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Ultimate Edition detailed
Comic Jumper, Hydrophobia, and more dated, priced
UNICO touts it ruins Mafia II party, doesn’t really
Twisted Pixel at PAX: Ukulele performances, prizes, more
Dave Mustaine brings ‘ass kicking’ to Guitar Hero
Pachter: Xbox Live to get $100 Platinum service

Offbeat:
Wii remote vibrating sex aids: It had to happen
Dead Rising 2’s Chuck Greene: Father of the Year
11-year-old’s Mario collection is bigger than yours

Media:
Cabela’s North American Adventures actually looks great
Hothead tells us what it’s like to be a game developer
Video, more images of Kinect beta experience leaks

Zombies, psychopaths, and questionable parenting skills all came to Xbox Live Arcade this week in the form of Dead Rising 2: Case Zero. It’s a new main character, a new story, new survivors and the same old zombies all in a neat, focused package. 

Read on for our review.

Dead Rising 2: Case Zero (Xbox 360)
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Release date: August 31, 2010
MSRP: 400 MS Points

In Dead Rising: Case Zero, we’re given the first opportunity to play new series protagonist Chuck Greene. Case Zero doesn’t reveal new details about the character or really any details at all. The introductory cutscene sets up the scenario wherein Chuck’s truck is stolen with his infected daughter’s anti-zombie medication still inside and only twelve hours to go until her next required dose. That’s all. Hell, the only way you would know that Chuck was a famous motocross racer without foreknowledge is through a comment made by a survivor more than halfway through the game.

The only things we have to go on then are that Chuck is a man with a daughter that he loves enough to brave hordes of the undead to keep her alive. That’s enough. Cutscene interactions between Chuck and his daughter Katey are equal parts touching and cruel. Katey is convincing as a child, unaware and unable to understand what has happened to her world, serving her role well as the game’s main objective. Chuck is believable as well, if a bit melodramatic, and an easy character to get behind as a player. 

Beyond the initial situation there is very little resembling plot development in Case Zero, which is easy to understand considering its brief running time of about two hours (including cutscenes; there is, at the absolute most, an hour and twenty minutes of actual gameplay in a playthrough). The game is still effective at telling its story of a man and the lengths he’s willing to go to for his daughter, there just isn’t much story to tell.

That doesn’t prevent there from being a lot of cutscenes, however. The game seems utterly riddled with them and loading times both going into and out of cinematics feel a bit on the long side. This is fine for the first playthrough. But, by the third time you start over and have to skip through three cutscenes before being able to kill a zombie, it becomes annoying.

That’s what Dead Rising is all about, after all: killing zombies. Case Zero offers in the neighborhood of forty different items that you can use to defend yourself against the undead masses. Some items are only good for killing on their own, while others, indicated by a blue wrench icon, can be combined at workbenches to produce deadlier weapons or more potent items. Case Zero has nine of these combo items to build.

The combo items are the only practical way to earn experience points. Simply killing zombies won’t reward you with points. Significant quantities of points are only accrued through rescuing survivors and killing zombies in creative ways. Not that earning experience matters all that much in the context of Case Zero. You can progress Chuck through five levels of experience but there’s nary any value in it. You’ll only earn an additional inventory slot and a defensive move used when grabbed by zombies so there is not a whole lot of incentive to do so.

Chuck and the zombies aren’t alone in Still Creek, either. Some humans are holed up and in need of rescuing. Only one specific survivor needs to be rescued in order to complete the game, though you will have to interact with others to achieve Chuck’s goals. A central survivor is Bob, who appears on a rooftop near the center of town after a short time of playing. Bob’s vantage point allows him to see people moving through the town and he’ll flag down Chuck if he has information on the location of new survivors. Thankfully, he has neither a radio nor an over-developed sense of helpfulness with which to annoy you.

Getting this information is essentially the same as receiving a quest, complete with an objective and a guide arrow to lead you to it. These missions are timed and their timers start whether or not you ever receive the quest. Because of the small size of Still Creek and the limited number of things to do in the short game, it is at no point a problem to rescue everybody. In fact, it’s easy to wind up with hours to spare for mindlessly killing zombies while waiting for Katey to be ready to take her next dose of Zombrex.

If you played Dead Rising, you can probably recall a moment at which you honestly wished the survivors would just get themselves killed before you got to them. The AI used for survivors was utterly wretched and treks across Willamette Mall became exercises in torture and babysitting. Things are much, much better in Case Zero. In playing through the game half a dozen times, in only three instances did I have to go and free a survivor from a zombie’s grip and, when told to go to a specific point, living people actually follow the instruction and don’t foolishly try to kill things along the way. 

Pyschopaths, however, have not changed one bit. These survivors were one of the most frustrating parts of the first Dead Rising game, as there was really no difference between killing a psycho and killing a zombie except that the psychos are faster, usually have ranged weapons and apparently have a greater resistance to pain than something which cannot feel pain. They were annoying before and that hasn’t changed, as evidenced by the sole psychopath encounter in Case Zero. There is no joy in fighting the game’s boss whatsoever, just frustration, annoyance and misery. 

I’ve tried to avoid referring to Dead Rising 2: Case Zero as a demo in this review. I don’t judge it as such. It’s a nice little slice of Dead Rising which stands perfectly fine on its own and I can honestly recommend it to people who want to kill zombies for a few hours but would not otherwise enjoy the time-based mechanics and rigid scheduling necessary to complete a longer Dead Rising title. And for those who are already planning to purchase, it’s an inexpensive and inoffensive way to slate your hunger for zombie decimation while offering something extra (though not much) to take with you when Dead Rising 2 comes out.

Score: 7 — Good (7s are solid games that definitely have an audience. Might lack replay value, could be too short or there are some hard-to-ignore faults, but the experience is fun.)

While gamers still curse Microsoft for its recent Xbox Live price hike, industry analyst and sourpuss Michael Pachter has used magic to determine that it’s going to get a lot more expensive than that. The soothsayer has had visions of a new tier to Xbox Live — a $100 Platinum service.

“The extra $10 translates to around $100 — 150 million per year in additional revenue for Microsoft,” says the bottersnike. “I think that they will reinvest at least this much in developing other new applications, and will roll out a premium service with $100-200 million worth of enhancements. If they can get 2 million users to switch from the $60 plan to the $100 plan, they’ll make an extra $80 million a year, and can keep investing to try to grow that business.

“… For all I know, the Platinum plan might include virtual goods credits for various Microsoft games. If members could get specialized Halo armor or weapons worth the extra $40, they might be more willing to sign up, and it doesn’t really cost Microsoft anything to offer things like that … I think that the possibilities are limitless, although it’s a bit early to speculate on what precisely they will offer.”

Microsoft has demonstrated often that no amount of money is too much to ask from gamers, so introducing a new paid tier to the Xbox Live structure really wouldn’t shock me. The question is, how many of us are only paying because Microsoft held online gaming hostage, and what would it take to wrangle another $40 a year out of us?

Xbox Live Likely to See $100 ‘Platinum’ Service Next, says Pachter [Industry Gamers]