Source: videogamesblogger.com

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed has gotten it’s latest downloadable content (DLC) update in the form of a new mission along with a new set of character skins for players to try out.

Called the “Jedi Temple Mission Pack”, it’s priced at 800 Microsoft points ($10) for the Xbox 360 version and brings Darth Vader’s Secret Apprentice to Coruscant and the ruins of its Jedi Temple as the protagonist searches for more information on his father.

The stage itself, the Jedi Temple, appeared in the PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable and Wii versions of the game but ended up getting cut from the Xbox and PlayStation 3 versions. So now next-gen console owners will be able to see what they were missing out on.

New costumes from the Mission Pack include: Temple Exploration Gear, Cybernetic Reconstruction Apprentice, Sith Training Gear, Mace Windu, Darth Maul, Qui-Gon Jinn, Dark Stalker, Lightsaber Training Droid and Combat Training Droid.

A separate 400 Microsoft Point ($5) Character Pack adds a variety of new player skins, including: Republic Trooper, Tatooine Luke, Ben Kenobi, Jedi Master Plo Koon, Count Dooku, Jango Fett, and C-3PO along with three new costumes: Utility Combat Suit Apprentice, Animated-style Apprentice, and Spirit Apprentice.

Note that the PlayStation 3 version of the “Jedi Temple Mission Pack” will be available on December 11th.

Source: videogamesblogger.com

It wasn’t that long ago (only days, really) that the WoW world was set aflame (or a-ice) with World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. And already Blizzard is discussing some new features.

In an interview with Eurogamer, chief operating officer Paul Sams discussed a new feature that will allow subscribers to pay a small fee in order to make changes to their characters. Allowing them to reverse any decisions they made previously that they may regret . . . or just want to change for the heck of it.

“When you create your character, often times you wish you’d done things differently. You wish you were on a different realm, you wish you’d had a different name or you wish you’d chosen a different look and feel to your character,” Sams said. “This is a way for players to be able to do that, but it’s something that’s taking a lot of time and energy for us to be able to put in place. We also think that it’s important to have some consistency in the game, we don’t want people changing their look and feel every day.”

This goes on top of the new additions made to character customization in Wrath of the Lich King, which includes the ability to change your character’s hairstyle, jewelery and other details for a small fee. This new feature however will apparently go way further than that, allowing you to change your gender, race and even facial appearance.

In terms of cost, Sams says that he thinks “it is good value for customers, it’s not like we’re going to go about pricing it in such a way that it’s unfair or inappropriate.”

Source: videogamesblogger.com

David Hasselhoff aka “The Hoff” has entered the building! Or rather, entered the PAIN.

Sony has announced that David Hasselhoff is going to be added as a playable, flingable, “feel free to run me over with a car or fling me through a glass window” character in Idol Minds PS3 downloadable game, PAIN. You will be able to download him on November 6th, 2008 as part of the PAIN Movie Lot expansion (which isn’t free).

So how did this come about? Here are some details straight from the mouth of The Hoff via the PlayStation blog:

“What am I doing in PAIN you ask? It’s the Movie Studio! What’s a movie studio without The Hoff? You can now put The Hoff into a launcher and fling me into harm’s way – exploding crates, cars, people – everything is fair game. And best of all, you’ll never even put a scratch on this mug of mine!

When I was first approached about PAIN, I really didn’t know what to think. I mean, it’s great to think that someone would want to put me in a game, but THIS game is all about flinging people into walls, smashing them into cars, and spanking monkeys. While I wholeheartedly approve of the monkey spanking, I wasn’t too sure about the rest of the game. When I finally got my hands on PAIN though, everything changed, and I “got it”. If anybody can understand silly fun, it’s me.”

In addition, David Hasselhoff recorded an exclusive song which is a cover of Culture Club’s “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me”.

Another really cool tidbit revealed in the comments section by the creator of PAIN is the fact that he “honestly tried to get Chuck Norris”! Come on Chuck! PLEASE RECONSIDER!

By the way, Chuck has finally gotten his own game, called Chuck Norris: Bring on the Pain . . . but now he needs to TAKE THE PAIN!

It’ll be interesting to see what other celebrities Idol Minds will be able to add to pain. What celebrities would you like to see?

Source: videogamesblogger.com

The good news: Namco Bandai have announced that come October 23th, 2008, both Darth Vader and Yoda will become downloadable characters to fill up that empty spot in your Soul Calibur 4 characters roster.

The bad news: The downloadable content will cost you 400 Microsoft Points ($5.00) for Darth Vader on Xbox 360 and $4.99 for Yoda on PlayStation 3.

More screenshots at Dengeki, translation from Japanese by 1UP.

Source: videogamesblogger.com

The Wizard class has been revealed for Diablo III at the BlizzCon 2008 show.

This awesome CG trailer starts out with a wizard as she enters hostel territory, and ends up with some sweet looking gameplay footage of the wizard casting some very cool looking spells that include: Disintegrate, Electrocute, Teleport, Magic Missile and Slow Time.

More information on the Wizard class can be found at the official Diablo 3 web-site.

Source: videogamesblogger.com

Out of the complete Street Fighter 4 cast, 19 characters have been revealed like Ken and Crimson Viper. Producer Yoshinori Ono (who also did Street Fighter III 3rd Strike: Fight for the Future) has said that the character roster “isn’t finalised yet, but we’re trying to use all the characters from Street Fighter II’ Turbo, and we’re obviously cooking up new characters as well.”

We thought it was time to list the Street Fighter 4 characters below that have been confirmed for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC versions of the fighting game (with online multiplayer) that will be released in winter 2008 and in Arcades in July 2008.

When you click on each Street Fighter 4 character’s name below, a window will pop up with a picture of him / her.

New characters are:
1. Abel
2. Crimson Viper
3. El Fuerte (AKA The Strong One)
4. Rufus
5. Seth (AKA The Puppet Master is the final boss)

Returning characters are:
6. Balrog
7. Blanka
8. Chun-Li
9. Dan Hibiki (home version exclusive)
10. Dhalsim
11. E. Honda
12. Fei Long (home version exclusive)
13. Guile
14. Ken Masters
15. M. Bison
16. Ryu
17. Sagat
18. Vega
19. Zangief

Still missing from the Street Fighter II’ Turbo cast or hinted at characters are:
* Cammy White
* Dee Jay
* Ibuki
* Sakura Kasugano
* T. Hawk
* Akuma (AKA Gouki) was confirmed by Capcom to not be in the game.

Even if those or some of your other past favorites do not return at the time of release, they might still appear later on. How? Mr. Ono is also looking into the possibility of using microtransactions for future downloadable content updates which might include new characters and stages, but that’s ultimately up to Capcom.

Watch parts of various matches between the Street Fighter 4 characters that show off the game’s art style:

Street Fighter 4’s “2D” six-button gameplay will have new special moves, including Focus attacks, Super Combos, and the revenged-fueled Ultra Combo system.

Watch the Epic Return trailer with music from Faith No More:

Click on the bottom-right corner arrow to view it fullscreen.

PS: We’ll update this list when more characters get confirmed.

Source: videogamesblogger.com

Out of all Soul Calibur 4 characters, Yoda and Vader are the most talked about fighters. Well, out of the male characters anyway. Let’s take a look at how they control in battle.

“Transcending history and the world, a tale of swords and souls, eternally retold.” Watch the Ubidays 2008 trailer:


Watch Yoda in action, you must.

Vader shows Hilde the power of the dark side.

Source: videogamesblogger.com

Out of the complete Soul Calibur 4 cast, 31 characters have been revealed like Ivy and Tira, but we thought it was time to list the Soul Calibur 4 characters below that have been confirmed for the upcoming July 29th, 2008, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 fighting game.

Darth Vader and Yoda, characters from the Star Wars universe, are confirmed to be playable guest characters but exclusive to different platforms. Vader will be on the PS3 and Yoda will be on the Xbox 360, however it was stated in issue 179 of GameInformer magazine that “Namco was nice enough to concede that the second characters may be available for download on the respective consoles at a later date.”

When you click on each Soul Calibur 4 character’s name below, a window will pop up with a picture of him / her.

Returning characters:
1. Amy
2. Astaroth
3. Cassandra Alexandra
4. Cervantes de Leon
5. Ivy (Isabella Valentine)
6. Kilik
7. Lizardman (Aeon Calcos)
8. Maxi
9. Mitsurugi (Heishiro)
10. Nightmare
11. Raphael Sorel
12. Rock (Nathaniel Adams)
13. Seong Mi-na
14. Setsuka
15. Siegfried Schtauffen
16. Sophitia Alexandra
17. Taki
18. Talim
19. Tira
20. Voldo
21. Xianghua Chai
22. Yoshimitsu
23. Yun-seong
24. Zasalamel

New characters:
25. Angol Fear (bonus character designed by guest artist Mine Yoshizaki)
26. Ashlotte (bonus character designed by guest artist Oh! great)
27. Darth Vader (Star Wars guest character on the PlayStation 3 version)
28. Hilde(gard) von Krone
29. Scheherazade (bonus character designed by guest artist Yutaka Izubuchi)
30. Shura (bonus character designed by guest artist Hiroya Oku)
31. Yoda (Star Wars guest character on the Xbox 360 version)

On top of all these characters, Namco Bandai’s game director Katsutoshi Sasaki has said that Create-a-Character will return from Soul Calibur 3, and will allow customized and created characters to be playable in multiplayer mode (in Special VS online as well).

Missing characters (from previous games):
Abyss
Abelia
Arthur
Assassin
Aurelia
Berserker
Charade
Chester
Demuth
Edge Master
Girardot
Greed
Han-myeong
Hualin
Hwang
Inferno / SoulEdge
Li Long
Lizardman (Generic)
Luna
Lynette
Miser
Necrid
Night Terror
Olcadan
Revenant
Strife
Valeria

Quotes via Wikipedia, for more pictures go to SCU.

PS: We’ll keep this list updated as new characters are announced.

Source: videogamesblogger.com

Tomorrow, on January 31st, in Japan the Wii fighting game Super Smash Bros. Brawl will be released. Yesterday the game’s street date was broken and some lucky Japanese Smash fans got an early copy of the game that revealed 1 newcomer and 7 veterans for Brawl.

Now those same gamers have played through the game’s modes and as a result we can now confirm the last secret newcomer Wolf as one of the 35 characters in Super Smash Bros Brawl! Here’s what he looks like:

Wolf (from the Star Fox series)

Some of Wolf’s (clone) moves are:
B — Blaster. Less range fires slower than Fox and Falco, but looks stronger.
Forward B — Same as Fox and Falco’s shadow fox dash. Only Wolf’s goes slightly upwards too. At about a 25 degree angle.
Down B — Reflector
Up B — Like Firefox, only it doesn’t really charge, goes really high though.
Final Smash — Red Landmaster:

The complete Super Smash Bros. Brawl character roster from the Japanese version looks as follows:

Here’s an awesome new gameplay video showing Snake VS. Sonic VS. Dedede VS. MetaKnight on Shadow Moses.

Watch Zero Suit Samus VS. Sheik on the F-Zero GX Port Town Stage.

Update: Here’s a random 4-player online Wi-Fi match with Wolf.

Via Neogaf

Source: videogamesblogger.com

The latest issue of Japanese games magazine Famitsu has unveiled the first of the new female characters in Street Fighter IV that the fighting game’s Producer Yoshinori Ono talked about in an interview. Sadly the scan from Neogaf is a bit blurry, but what could be translated is her name: Crimson Viper.