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Let's Tap
Developer:Prope
Publisher: Sega
Released: June 16, 2009
MSRP: $29.99

We thought we had it all. We could use the Wii remote as a sword, fishing rod, tennis racket, baseball bat, lightsaber and an assortment of other weapons and sports paraphernalia. But alas, we didn’t have it all. At least not until Let’s Tap. Now, gamers can set their Wiimotes down for a change and tap their way to single or multiplayer victory. Or just have fun with fish in a pond or fireworks in the sky.

Let’s Tap does introduce a new way to play with the Wii remote, but is it more tech demo than game? Hit the jump and find out!

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Both legal and illegal digital video game distribution systems may be in for a big change – today The Pirate Bay, one of largest torrent tracking websites on the Internet, changed hands.  Global Gaming Factory X, or GGF, paid 7.8 million USD for the infamous file-sharing site, and they plan on going legit.

“We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site,” GGF CEO Hans Pandeya stated, “Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it. File-sharers need faster downloads and better quality.”

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Sorry, New Game Plus Could Not Be Loaded.

When you complete a game do you like to restart a character from scratch or begin with all of his attributes, weapons and perks while at the very beginning of the game? Although Mass Effect 1 had this “new game plus.” feature, it appears that Mass Effect 2 will not.

Heres why:

The reason is progression. We have been working very hard to make sure we design the abilities system to offer smooth progression into ME3 from ME2. Allowing double progression on characters makes that almost impossible. We have to have reasonable knowledge about where a character could end up finishing all content on a playthrough. We also want to offer choice of character build within specific classes.

We replaced that feature with playing after you were done because it preserves progression and allows for smoother downloading of PRC.

Personally, I love this feature, so it’s a bit of a shame that the devs are not including it. What do you think? Let us know in the comments!

Source

If you weren’t able to make the trip to E3 this year and get some hands on time with the PSP Go, thanks to C-net you now have the second best thing. Video of a hands on with the PSP Go. Let us know what you think of the PSP Go in the comments!

You might find this article interesting as well if you’re a PSP enthusiast: State of The PSP For Those Who Don’t Own One

The game character and franchise that simply refuses to die, Duke Nukem, may be resurrected in a 2k Games developed titled called Duke Begins. Duke Nukem developer Apogee Software incidentally revealed Duke Begins in a court filing last Friday that responded to a suit filed against them by Take-Two Interactive. Heres where the court filing gets interesting:

On October 22, 2007, Apogee, Take-Two, and 2K Games entered into an agreement in which Apogee granted 2K Games the exclusive right to develop and publish a new videogame based upon Apogee’s Duke Nukem franchise… The new game was given the working title of “Duke Begins” and is not the same game as the DNF game…

The original development schedule for the Duke Begins game provided that the game was to be completed and commercially released by mid-2010…

Take Two and/or its subsidiary 2K Games halted or otherwise cancelled all development work by the third-party game developer on the Duke Begins game in April 2009… without Apogee’s approval or consent…

When Apogee confronted Take-Two and 2K Games about the… cancellation of the Duke Begins development work… Take-Two and 2K Games simply denied it… Take-Two and 2K Games are taking such actions with a goal of pressuring Apogee to sell the Duke Nukem franchise rights to Take-Two for less than their true value.

A new Duke Nukem game that’s not Duke Nukem Forever? It sounds like Duke Nukem has a power that game developers never programmed into him; the power to regenerate himself from the smallest pieces of himself, even when lawsuits and developers kill him.

[Source]

Parent company of Bethesda Softworks, ZeniMax Media Inc. announced today that it has acquired (ie gave large sums of money to) id Software. What does this mean for id Software and Bethesda? All id Software titles already committed to a publisher will continue down that path, but all forthcoming id Software titles will be published by Bethesda. The acquisition is not only a mere publishing deal, but will include more financial backing for id Software and presumably entail creative collaboration between both developers.

“This puts id Software in a wonderful position going forward,” said id Software’s Technical Director John Carmack.  “We will now be able to grow and extend all of our franchises under one roof, leveraging our capabilities across multiple teams while enabling forward looking research to be done in the service of all of them.  We will be bigger and stronger, as we recruit the best talent to help us build the landmark games of the future.”

Did ZeniMax Media and Bethesda see something of id Software’s behind closed doors that caught their attention? Or was this a move that was a long time coming? Let us know what you think in the comments!

ZeniMax Media Acquires id Software

Brings together two of world’s best game studios

Library of powerhouse franchises will include DOOM, Fallout, The Elder Scrolls,
QUAKE, Wolfenstein and RAGE

June 24, 2009  (Rockville, MD) – ZeniMax Media Inc., parent company of noted game publisher Bethesda Softworks, today announced it has completed the acquisition of legendary game studio, id Software, creators of world-renowned games such as DOOM, QUAKE, Wolfenstein, and its upcoming title, RAGE. Read the rest of this entry »

If you were surprised to see a Best Buy vending machine at an airport like we were, you can rest assured that Best Buy isn’t stopping there with it’s vending machine plan for world market domination as it’s rolling out game trading kiosks at select stores for a trial period. Although shoppers will not be able to actually trade their games for another, they can trade them for in-store credit. The kiosks are an answer to the ever expanding used game sales market and to Wal-Mart’s movie rental kiosk that doubles as a game trading station. Although Wal-Mart’s version does not give in-store credit, it doesn’t chain the consumer and their money to the retail giant as it gives them credit for their trade-ins on their debit or credit cards two to three days after the transaction.

Will this expansion of the market make a dent in GameStop’s used game sales? According to Colin Sebastian of Lazard Capital Markets, not at all. “While we believe that Best Buy’s entry into the used video game market will create a new overhang on shares of GameStop, we expect Best Buy’s initiative to expand the used videogame market rather than take significant share from the speciality channel.” So which has your used game vote, dar readers? GameStop, Wal-Mart or Best Buy? Let us knowin the comments!

[Source]

Analysts and Gamestop representatives love predicting PS3 price cuts, but recently games publisher Activision seems to be demanding it. Activision CEO Bobby Kotick told The Times that his company might stop supporting Sony if they didn’t see a price cut soon.

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