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IGN Releases Babylon A.D. Trailer

Vin Diesel starring in Babylon A.D.

The folks over at IGN were nice enough to hand us over the trailer for Vin Diesel‘s upcoming action sci-fi thriller, Babylon A.D..

Based upon Maurice Georges Dantec’s French novel Babylon Babies, the film has been on a close watch for movie geeks everywhere since production began. French director Mathieu Kassovitz (Munich) directed the movie, which features a dominantly-French cast, including big-time French actor Gérard Depardieu!

It’s always nice to an actor going back to his or her roots. Honestly, what was he thinking when he signed on to The Pacifier?

You can expect it to hit theaters on August 29. Check out the trailer after the jump!

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IGN.com


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Mercenaries 2 Delayed Until 2008

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EA‘s upcoming open-world game Mercenaries 2: World in Flames is being pushed back until 2008, further relaxing the pressure on a still crowded holiday season for games. Speaking to developer Pandemic Studios President Josh Resnick, IGN coaxed out a few more details:

We’re adding nothing at this point. Our only goal is to make gamers proud that they own a copy of Mercenaries 2 by making the highest quality next-gen open-world experience the world has ever seen. If that sounds ambitious, then you should see how many cans of caffeine our programming guys have choked down during the past two years of development.

Resnick also complimented Rockstar and said that he wasn’t concerned about competing with Grand Theft Auto IV because, as he puts it, “We know gamers are bloodhounds when it comes to sniffing out a quality gameplay experience, and we’re hoping that scent leads them directly to Mercenaries 2.” He said they were using the extra time to focus on fixing bugs, tuning the physics and working on the mission structures.

The delay was initial rumored because retail outlets adjusted their release dates from late ‘07 to 2008, forcing Pandemic and EA to confirm the delay. Commenting on the leak, Resnick said, “Those dang sneaky retailers! You just can’t seem to keep a lid on something once they hear about it.”

Read More | IGN

Heavenly Sword Demo Coming In “Very Near Future”

Posted by Chris Pereira Categories: Action, PlayStation 3,

Heavenly Sword

I’ve aired my concerns over Heavenly Sword, which by all indications looks to be nothing more than a game where you beat the hell out of enemies in a coliseum setting. We’ve been promised a lot more, but we haven’t seen much more, so I’ve been reserving my excitement for when we get to see some of the real meat of the game. Well, it looks like we’ll have that opportunity when a demo is released on the PlayStation Network in the “very near future,” whatever that means.

The head of production at developer Ninja Theory, Mat Hart, had this to say on the developer’s IGN blog:

I can confirm that we are, of course, going to be releasing a demo for Heavenly Sword - and soon! This will be downloadable via the Playstation Network, so keep an eye out for it in the very near future - and I mean very near future!

Maybe this will be something we’ll see next week during E3. We know that Microsoft will be releasing tons of Marketplace content during the event as it did last year, so perhaps this is Sony’s way of combating that. Keep your fingers crossed.

Read More | Ninja Theory IGN Blog via Eurogamer


First Wii Reviews Trickle In - Overall “Good” to “Impressive”

IGN Ratings
Today some of the bigger gaming sites out there finally sat down with pencil and paper (or keyboard and mouse I guess), and started drafting out their reviews for the first batch of Wii games. Their overall thoughts? IGN has taken a look at three titles so far—the pack-in Wii Sports, Trauma Center, and Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz—and their reviews range from “Good” for Wii Sports (7.5) to “Impressive” for Trauma Center and Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz (8.0 and 8.4, respectively).

In general, most of the reviews would play out like you would expect - generally somewhat lackluster / simple graphics, but cool/interesting control schemes that work flawlessly in most cases. IGN noted some control issues with the packed-in Wii Sports, stating that some of the sports seemed somewhat half-baked, but the other 2 titles faired very well in the control department. IGN even went so far with Monkey Ball as to state that “If you’ve been on the fence about the Wii controls, put those fears to rest. True, there is a different technique involved, but once you get the hang of it you will be flying through levels with precision and speed. Now that I’ve played through Banana Blitz, I would not want to go back to the older control configurations.”

We’ll keep our eyes peeled for further reviews - Red Steel and Zelda obviously being the two most interesting, and we’ll be posting our thoughts as well once we’re able to get our hands on the console!

Read More | IGN Wii

No “Free Press” In Game Industry

Posted by Rob Stevens Categories: Editorial, Features, Video Games,

Hey Dave…still want to know why there’s no real journalism in the video game industry?  It’s because of stories like this, and like this, and like this.

How on earth are you supposed to have a “free press” in the game industry when the companies that admittedly support its existence are constantly trying to keep all of the news under wraps?  I suspect that in at least one of these recent cases of IGN pulling content, a deal was brokered for an exclusive in exchange for pulling the content, but when are these companies going to learn that you can’t put the genie back in the bottle?

The games industry is one where companies have seen rampant “idea theft”, concepts shown early to generate buzz which proceed to get ripped off eight ways from Sunday by less talented development houses able to rush a competing product to market.  Nintendo was such a victim of this particular tactic (specifically after showing off Super Mario 64 for the first time), that they have become the most secretive company in all of the game industry.  So I get it, I understand why these companies want to keep their secrets under wraps ... it’s a matter of securing their revenue stream, and I can respect that.

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