If there was one thing that people complained about when Burnout Paradise hit shelves, heyond no restarts, was the lack of the old school Crash mode of gameplay that people loved.  Well, those people can feel free to rejoice today as Criterion and EA have announced Burnout CRASH for both XBLA and PSN this fall.

Burnout CRASH will allow players to crash, wreck and let loose mayhem on traffic-filled streets in order to rack up huge points.  CRASH will also include the beloved Autolog system as well, which will update your wall and your friends walls with scores and info, ensuring a certain level of competition among friends.

Burnout CRASH will also be the first EA published title on the XBLA that will have a dedicated Kinect mode of gameplay, which will allow two players to direct the mayhem using the Kinect device on Xbox 360.

Check out more info on Burnout CRASH on the Criterion Blog.

If you have been waiting for a deal on some of the big shooters from the last year (or more in one case), Direct 2 Drive might have the hookup for you.  They have teamed up with Electronic Arts to offer up discounts of 30-75% off on specific, shooter oriented titles.

Some of the titles included in the sale are:

• Crysis 2 – $41.97 (30% off)
• Bulletstorm – $29.97 (50% off)
• Medal of Honor – $14.97 (50% off)
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadows of Chernobyl – $4.98 (75% off)
• Mass Effect 2 – $9.97 (50% off)
• Battlefield Bad Company 2 – $9.97 (50% off)

Head over to the Direct2Drive sale page to get in on the low prices.  I have to admit that Bulletstorm at $30 is enticing for me, but I still think Crysis 2 is a tad bit high for my tastes.

Digging through the EA quaterly financials, one thing that sticks out is the fact that Mass Effect 3 is shown as launching in Q4 of fiscal year 2012 for Electronic Arts.  This basically translates into Q1 2012 on the standard calendar.

My first reaction was disappointment, as Mass Effect 3 was my fourth quarter game, and the only title I was looking forward to come Fall.  However, this new date probably works out better, and when you think about it, Mass Effect 2 hit the same window after a short delay and ended up becoming game of the year at a lot of sites. 

So, you will have to wait a little longer for Mass Effect 3, but the extra time can only help a game that is going to close out one of the best trilogies in gaming.

Every screen and trailer of the deliciously dark Alice: Madness Returns leaves me slightly giddy with anticipation, so when these gameplay videos hit, I was all over them like a fat kid on a doughnut.

With stunning aesthetics and a cute creepiness, these videos give an insight into how the game looks and performs, including a few examples of the game’s enemies and combat mechanics.

What do you think? Generic and predictable, or potentially a very interesting addition to your collection?

Alice: Madness Returns is published by EA and is scheduled for release on 14 June 2011 for the 360, PS3 and PC.

Source: TSA

Epic and EA have announced that the demo for Bulletstorm will be coming to North America’s XBLA on January 25th and Europe’s PSN will get it on the 26th. There is no mention of the North American PSN version of the demo. The release date for the UK has been named as February 25th.

This demo will include a sample of Echo mode, which the press release describes as follows:

From highest score to total number of skillshots performed , players can compete with their friends for bragging rights in Echo mode as they decimate enemies with over-the-top combat moves using some of the most innovative weapons ever seen in a first-person shooter. With more than 45 skillshots in the demo, players are encouraged to “Kill with Skill” in Bulletstorm, finding stylish and ever imaginative ways to take down anyone that stands in their way. The Bulletstorm demo also allows players to unlock platform-specific upgrades* to use in the game’s Anarchy mode, from the Crimson Leash to Stealth Armor, when they purchase the full game.

Excited?

EPIC GAMES AND EA KICK-START THE NEW YEAR WITH A DEMO FOR BULLETSTORM
Get a Taste of One of 2011’s Most Anticipated Games Starting on January 25

Guildford, UK. –January 14, 2010 – People Can Fly, Epic Games and Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) today announced a demo for Bulletstorm, the highly anticipated new action shooter from the makers of the award-winning Gears of War and Unreal series of games. Starting on January 25, the demo will give players a taste of the guns, action and attitude Bulletstorm has to offer, with Entertainment Weekly describing Bulletstorm as “an intense, outrageous shooter,” and Seth Schiesel from the New York Times stating, “the name should say it all; big guns, lots of lead and over-the-top mayhem.”

Bulletstorm ships with three game modes: the pulp sci-fi, single-player campaign; Anarchy multiplayer mode; and Echo mode, a unique experience that tracks and compares players’ scores while they play through locations found in the campaign. The Bulletstorm demo introduces a slice of Echo mode in which players traverse a collapsed building on the deadly paradise planet Stygia as ex-Dead Echo leader Grayson Hunt. Players will utilize the “Skillshot” system in Bulletstorm as they crush enemies in increasingly creative ways to rack up points using an arsenal of powerful weapons, from a futuristic assault rifle called the Peace Maker Carbine, to the Flail Gun, which fires two grenades linked by a chain, and the Screamer, a powerful revolver that turns enemies into human fireworks.

From highest score to total number of skillshots performed , players can compete with their friends for bragging rights in Echo mode as they decimate enemies with over-the-top combat moves using some of the most innovative weapons ever seen in a first-person shooter. With more than 45 skillshots in the demo, players are encouraged to “Kill with Skill” in Bulletstorm, finding stylish and ever imaginative ways to take down anyone that stands in their way. The Bulletstorm demo also allows players to unlock platform-specific upgrades* to use in the game’s Anarchy mode, from the Crimson Leash to Stealth Armor, when they purchase the full game.

The Bulletstorm demo will be available for download January 25 on Xbox LIVE™ Marketplace Worldwide and the PlayStation®Network on January 26 in the UK. Poised to be one of 2011’s most original games, the Bulletstorm Epic Edition will be available for the Xbox 360® videogame and entertainment system and grant early access to the Gears of War 3 beta as well as additional bonus content in-game**.

The Bulletstorm Limited Edition will be available for the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and PC and will also offer additional bonus content in-game**. Bulletstorm will be available on Feb. 25, 2011 in the UK. For more information on Bulletstorm, please visit www.bulletstorm.com and www.facebook.com/bulletstorm or follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bulletstorm.

* Content subject to availability.

** Conditions and restrictions apply. Whiles supplies last. See back of pack for details if and when available.

About People Can Fly
People Can Fly, an Epic Games studio, creates visually and technically superior action games for PC and console entertainment systems. Founded in 2002 and based in Warsaw, Poland, People Can Fly is developing “Bulletstorm,” an original, Unreal Engine 3-powered onslaught of ‘kill with skill’ gameplay and blockbuster moments to be released in 2011 by Electronic Arts. People Can Fly made its mark on the shooter genre with its award-winning “Painkiller” series of games for PC and Xbox prior to shipping Epic’s “Gears of War” for PC. Additional information about People Can Fly can be found at www.peoplecanfly.com.

EA has some NBA Jam answers for you, perhaps resolving one of the most confusing product announcements of the year.

Formerly a gimped tagalong to the 360 and PS3 versions of the misbegotten NBA Elite 11, the high-def version of NBA Jam will instead arrive as a full $50 boxed retail release. The game is out November 17, and will be followed in December by a free update to add in certain modes and features.

Presumably this is expected to justify the $50 price tag. Although really, if the game arrives with feature parity with the $50 Wii version, I’d say it’s done enough. The big talking point here is that 360/PS3 fans were sort of expecting the game to be effectively free (with a built-in DLC store to add in any “missing” content.) Check out the feature list below and judge for yourself. Me, I’m tired.

EA SPORTS NBA JAM TO FEATURE ONLINE PLAY ON XBOX 360 AND PLAYSTATION 3

Critically Acclaimed Game Will be Available In Stores on HD Platforms November 17; Free Title Update To Enhance Online Experience By December

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – October 21, 2010 – Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) announced today that EA SPORTS™ NBA JAM will be available in stores worldwide November 17 for the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and Xbox 360® videogame and entertainment system and, for the first time ever for the arcade classic, in high definition and featuring online play. Described by Gamesradar.com as “virtually perfect”— NBA JAM will take advantage of the online communities playing on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 to bring all the action into your own virtual arcade.

Featuring gameplay that is true to the original, NBA JAM will have players spinning with ankle breaking moves to the basket and on the way to high-flying, backboard-smashing dunks. With two distinct game modes—Classic Campaign and Remix Tour—plus online modes, EA SPORTS NBA JAM offers something for everyone.

At launch, gamers will be able to take on all rivals playing Classic 2-on-2 online^ for the first time ever, measuring their success on Friends and Global Leaderboards. In December 2010, the online features for NBA JAM will expand significantly with several major online features being delivered through a free title update for connected gamers. In December, connected fans will be able to team-up locally and online to compete in Remix Games, including classic arcade hoop games like Backboard Smash, Domination Free-for-All, Elimination, and 21. Fans will also be able to make it a Jam Party online by inviting up to 3 friends to play. Plus, gamers will be able to take on the world in Online Progression, levelling up through a series of challengers and secret online JAM Challenges to unlock online exclusive rewards and hidden content in the ultimate quest for global bragging rights.

“We have listened to our NBA JAM fans and appreciate their desire to play this game online, so we are going to deliver the online feature set they expect and deserve,” said Trey Smith, Creative Director of NBA JAM. “Fans will be able to play Classic JAM online right out of the box, and can expect to enjoy features like Team-up, Remix Online, Jam Party, Online Progression, and even more secret players and teams, in December.”

In Classic Campaign, players can take a trip down memory lane, individually or with a friend, as they play all 30 teams in the NBA in a worst to first ladder tournament. In Remix Tour, players will be faced with a new twist on the traditional NBA JAM experience. From boss battles against some of the NBA’s greatest legends, to half-court game modes with distinct challenges and winning conditions, players will be taken through an NBA JAM experience completely unique to the basketball videogame genre while demonstrating classic arcade hoops at its best.

EA SPORTS NBA JAM for Wii™ is currently the 8th highest rated sports game ever on the Wii*. It is available in stores now. EA SPORTS NBA JAM is rated “E” for Everyone by the ESRB and 3+ by PEGI in Europe. The MSRP on the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation3 is $49.99 US. Visit http://www.facebook.com/#!/NBAJAM to join the EA SPORTS NBA Jam Facebook group or visit http://nba-jam.easports.com for more information about the game. Screenshots are available at http://info.ea.com.

EA haven’t made any official announcements about what goodies a Dead Space 2 Collectors’ Edition might boast, but thanks to an over-eager employee of Amazon, they now no longer have to.

Courtesy of the eagle-eyes and screen-capping skills of The Examiner, we can see firsthand what Visceral think we’d like to see in a CE – namely artwork, a soundtrack and DLC extras – even though the picture was quickly pulled from Amazon’s site.

Oh, and there’s also a replica Plasma Cutter. Yeah, that’s right – A REPLICA PLASMA CUTTER. Just how chocful of awesome is that?

Dead Space 2 is scheduled for release on 25 and 28 January 2011, in the US and UK respectively.

It was just announced the other day that Realtime Worlds was unable to find additional funding or a new buyer for their All Points Bulletin (APB) MMORPG and have disclosed the fact that they are going to shut it down soon.  Now, most people knew that APB had been sitting on precarious footing even before its launch, and it just seemed to go downhill faster than Leon Sphinx in a Tyson fight.  I mean here we are, just over three months out from APB’s launch and it is over, finite and done.  So how does an MMORPG, which normally stay alive for at least a year or two, even when they perform poorly at the register fail so spectacularly?  It seems to be a mix between a protracted development cycle, ambitious monetary goals, and customer confusion that did the game in, at least from my view on the sidelines.

When APB was first announced about four years ago, it seemed like a natural progression of the genre.  I mean, here was a game that would take the successful formula from the Grand Theft Auto series and turn it into a persistent world multiplayer game.  Not content with making a multiplayer game, Realtime Worlds said it would be an MMORPG title, which again, sounded fantastic.  I remember when several people found the multiplayer code in Vice City and created Mutli-Theft Auto, which was a fun mod for that franchise.  Sure it was a bit rough, but it was enjoyable enough that it made me want to have some sort of official multiplayer component in the next GTA.  My itch would be scratched a few years later when a former Rockstar developer announced APB.  It would an MMORPG, with two sides battling for control of the city, with cops on one side and criminals on the other.  Slam dunk for a game project, you would think.

However, one thing that you cannot do when you get a hot property is sit on it for several years.  All that does is give your competition the chance to sweep in behind you and create the game that you had on the drawing board all along.  In this case, after Rockstar released another game lacking multiplayer in GTA: San Andreas, it seemed that the next game in the series would have a multiplayer mode.  It also does not help your cause when other games come out using a similar game concept and turn out bad.  187: Ride or Die came out, boasting multiplayer with cops and robbers and ended up selling about as well as a warm cup of piss on a hot summer’s day.

But through all of this, I did follow up on APB from time to time, when a small news story would come out, or a random screen would appear on the Interwebs.  The character models looked fantastic, although, I figured no one believed that the in-game characters would look that good.  Development continued, with the game being tweaked, refined and rebuilt during the development process.  During this time, Realtime Worlds had another project that they were working on to help pay the bills, and when Crackdown hit shelves (with a Halo 3 beta key) it was a huge influx of much needed cash.  It seems as if the team was burning money left and right.

The game went dark again for a few years, until I got an email nearing E3 in 2009.  It seemed that a big announcement was coming at E3 about APB.  I waited anxiously to find out what it would be.   Were they going to publicly show the game in action, or maybe just announce a release date?  It ended up being a bit of both, with Realtime Worlds signing a publishing contract with EA Partners, while they also announced a release date.  I saw the character creation tool at E3 2009 and was floored by the amount of detail and customization you could put into your character.  It was amazing stuff and the fact that it worked in game just as well, was great.

Again, Realtime Worlds seemed to go dark until about two months before release, when we started to get more press releases, screens and trailers for APB.  This was to be the newest crown jewel for Realtime Worlds, a game that would revolutionize the genre and create a healthy bit of profit, something that needed to happen considering the rumored $50-100 million spent on the development of APB.

Things really got dicey right before launch, because the game came to E3 2010 and was pretty much universally panned.  People felt the game was sluggish, boring, and most of all, not an MMORPG.  Instead the game had turned into a larger sized Guild Wars, using instances to group 100 players together on a server.  Going from bad to worse, it seems that Electronic Arts started to realize that they were sitting on a festering wound of a game and started putting some pressure down about reviews and hopefully, delaying them until after the release of APB on store shelves.

Well, the rest seems to be history at that point, with APB hitting store shelves and digital distribution sites, having a strange subscription model that seemed okay on paper, but became far more confusing.  Then Realtime Worlds added in Voice chat support, but asked for a subscription to remove the advertisements from the voice chat service.  You had a free communal area and then the actual arena areas and it was all just a mess.  Several review outlets talked about frame rates in the single digits, lack of content, and a complete imbalance between the Enforcers (cops) and the Criminals (bad guys).

Now here we are, three months out from launch and we have a company that has been completely ravaged by a game that they honestly felt would be a great game, and to their credit, there were a lot of concepts that could be picked up by a company.  I mean, the player creation engine alone should be worth a fortune to a company that allows for player customizable characters.  Imagine that creation engine in the next Fallout or Oblivion title.  Yeah, I can. 

The sad thing is that a lot of players have enjoyed their time with the game, and have fought through the confusion and changes, and have made a place for them in the game.  They have been fiercely protective of the game, and have wanted nothing but success from the game, and unfortunately their persistent cheerleading could not save APB.  It hurts worse for people that may have bought the game in the last few weeks, now sitting on $50 worth of crap, as the servers will probably be closed before the end of September, and what is their recourse?  Steam has already said that they will not process any refunds for the game, and most would tell the consumer that you take a risk with any MMORPG when you click yes on the EULA box.  Worse still is that there are rumors that GameStop district managers are asking stores to mark the game down to $5.00 and get it off the shelves, in a sense, selling a defunct game to a consumer.  I really hope this is just normal trash coming from disgruntled GameStop customers, and yet, I would not put it past them?

Probably forgotten in all of this is a company that had a promising future basically ending up completely dismantled by one heartfelt creation.  Realtime Worlds had received a lot of good press with gamers after the launch of Crackdown.  Gamers were hoping for more from Realtime Worlds and the Crackdown franchise, but disagreements between Microsoft and Realtime Worlds left them looking for private funding for APB, and with mounting debt and little to show for it, we now have a group of people that will now be out of work, in an already struggling economy.  And the game industry has already seen enough consolidation and layoffs that it is a tough field to be looking for work.

Will companies learn anything from the collapse of Realtime Worlds and the APB franchise?  I assume that smaller companies might the trouble from trying to build a new MMORPG franchise from the ground up without major backing from an industry powerhouse.  The problem will also come back though, because there is always a company out there that swears up and down that they have found the secret to success in the MMORPG, or any other genre for that matter, and I am sure that we will see far more failures than successes over the years, but for these companies, they seem to think It is worth the monumental risk in order to make their dream project.

NHL Slapshot is EA’s go at creating an all-ages, casual-friendly hockey game. It comes with a black plastic peripheral that does an admirable job of turning a Wii Remote and Nunchuk into a hockey stick. Although it’s kind of a bitch putting it together. The manual does a terrible job at explaining it (no pictures!), but to make up for that the game rolls an assembly video for you on the first boot-up.

NHL Slapshot is, thus far, pretty good – it’s using EA’s well-worn hockey know-how – but you can tell the game is designed for a heretofore untrod middle ground: casual enough that you don’t care about player likenesses and deep crunchy hockey simming, but not so casual that you’d want the players in Mii form or cartoonified like the Backyard Sports series.

For the First Thirty, I did a quick-play all-defaults game of regulation hockey (Hershey Bears versus the Czech Republic, if you must know), checked out some of the minigames, and started the game’s quirky Peewee to Pro mode.

Obviously your first question is about the peripheral. Yes, you’re expected to use swinging motions to take shots at the goal. A short swing gives you a normal hit, a big shoulder-to-earth swing does a scorching slapshot. As with many motion controlled versions of standard games, I’m left wondering why this method is better than just hitting a button. It works well enough, although sometimes I felt like the mega-slapshot-swing was not registering, often just giving me the regular speed shot.

You check by thrusting the stick forward, which is pretty cool.

The game supports Remote+Nunchuk play without the peripheral and even Remote-by-itself play. Although in every case you’re still swinging the Remote to shoot, so don’t expect you can out-maneuever this game’s determination to use motion controls.

The Peewee angle is NHL Slapshot’s other defining gimmick. You can play as kids in a no-rules beginner’s rink. Although I don’t think the AI here is actually set to “kid”. I’ve seen plenty of peewee hockey and these AI peewees are leagues better. In the Peewee to Pro campaign mode, you begin with a kid character and take him all the way to the NHL, divvying out experience points and choosing special skill boosters along the way. Peewee players are all over the loading screens, including a young Gretzky on the box art, so you know the game is gunning for that family audience.

I’m into it. For all the silliness of the plastic stick, at least this is one case where the motion controls will not beat the hell out of your arms in an hour. We’ll see how I feel after the impressively gargantuan task of leading a custom player from age 8 to 38 across four separate hockey leagues.

NHL Slapshot will be in stores this week for $60.

In what might be the more boring thing I have read in quite some time – an Electronic Arts Quarterly Earnings Report – a few interesting announcements have been made on some upcoming titles.

First off, for those that loved the look of Crysis 2, and were drooling over the fact they would be playing this title near Christmas will have to wait a little longer.  The EA earnings report has stated that Crysis 2 has moved to the fourth quarter of the EA fiscal year, which represents January to March of 2011.  No reason was given for the delay, but either the game is taking Crytek longer to finish than previously thought or, given the amount of big FPS titles in the holiday season, looked to move it to a less congested area of the calendar.

Also nestled deep in this fiscal report was the announcement of a sequal to Need for Speed Shift.  With the original title, Need for Speed: Shift 2, it is also slated in the fourth fiscal quarter on the EA calendar.  Other titles in the January to March 2011 calendar are Dragon Age 2, Dead Space 2, Bulletstorm, Fight Night Champion, The Sims: Medieval and Darkspore.

Digital download revenue was also up for Electronic Arts in the current fiscal forecast, with that area of the business being a good source of revenue.  Income was up from a negative $234 million in 2009 to a positive $96 million ending June 30th, 2010 with a $0.29 per share net earning vs. a loss per share of $0.72 in 2009.  Yeah, it was that riveting.

So, the long and short of my torture was that EA seems to be improving, despite the current economic climate and seems to have a healthy slate of titles for gamers coming in late 2010 and early 2011.