Skyrim: The Epic Animated Experience

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Skyrim is an epic experience and adventure encompassing a wide land and filled with magic and wonders. Yet if it was reduced to a short animated flick parodying its moments big and small… you couldn’t ask for more than this.

Sonic 4: Episode 2 Gets Teased

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The 20th anniversary was a good one for Sonic, and it’s been closed out with the announcement of the second part of the anticipated Sonic 4: Episode 2. Along with Metal Sonic and Tails, the physics of the game have been tweaked to be closer to the Genesis incarnations.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=0KhMsQij8H0

Modern Warfare 3 Ad Draws Ire Of Afghanistan Veteran

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The Modern Warfare 3 ad featuring Sam Worthington and Jonah Hill about a veteran and a “noob” won acclaim and attention. However, former paratrooper and current novel writer and essayist D.B. Grady was not amused by how he saw the ad trivializing war.

“The advertisement trivializes combat and sanitizes war”, he writes. “If this were September 10, 2001, maybe it wouldn’t be quite so bad. Those who are too young to remember Vietnam might indulge in combat fantasies of resting heart rates while rocket-propelled grenades whiz by, and of flinty glares while emptying a magazine into the enemy. But after ten years of constant war, of thousands of amputees and flag-draped coffins, of hundreds of grief-stricken communities, did nobody involved in this commercial raise a hand and say, ‘You know, this is probably a little crass. Maybe we could just show footage from the game’.”

Source: The Atlantic

Twisted Metal Copies Have Special Gift

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David Jaffe has confirmed the final release packaging for the anticipated new Twisted Metal. He confirmed the team is hard at work to get the game completed by its February 14, 2012 release date.

Also, Jaffe said that everyone that purchases the game in its first printing will receive a copy of Twisted Metal: Black. The game will be offered as a download for everyone that purchases the game new.

Source: PlayStation Blog

Star Wars Battlefront III Might Be Announced Soon

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It’s been rumored for months that Spark Unlimited was working on the much anticipated Star Wars Battlefront III. Speculation has heightened on a rumor that Game Informer will officially announce the game for its January 2012 issue, not to mention a recent job posting.

“Spark is pleased to present our current listings for our two main projects,” reads the posting. “We are in production on an unannounced high-profile, popular game sequel for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC release. We have just entered pre-production on a franchise and genre extending game also for the current generation consoles.”

For it’s part, Spark responded to the rumors on Twitter saying, “Much like movies, bits and pieces of a game can end up on the proverbial cutting room floor. I can’t comment on our plans.”

Star Wars: The Old Republic Reception Bodes Well For MMO Games

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Star Wars: The Old Republic has a couple weeks of full operation at this point, and its reception has been mostly positive with professional reviews in the high 80s. With estimated peak concurrent users of roughly 350,000 players, Baird Equity Research’s Colin Sebastian thinks it portends good things for the MMO industry.

“We view the early success of Star Wars as an indication of a healthy MMO market,” said Baird Equity Research’s Colin Sebastian. “While there is likely some shifting of usage from Activision’s World of Warcraft, we see a viable market for multiple million-user MMOs in the U.S. and Europe.”

A decline in subscriptions to World of Warcraft is expected, though Sebastian sees no direct connection between the success of Star Wars: The Old Republic and a diminished amount of subscribers to World of Warcraft.

Verizon Customers Rankle At Outages, New Bill Fees

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Verizon’s reputation is built upon coverage and reliability, but this has been marred by a series of outages over the past few weeks. Additionally, the company announced a $2 fee on customers paying their bills by phone and on the Verizon website starting January 15.

“They’ve spent billions to say they have the highest quality network and up until this point they’ve been able to back that up,” said John Byrne, analyst with International Data Corp. “Particularly for a company like Verizon, this is a big problem.”

Byrne believes the outages suffered by Verizon Wireless are a result of the new network, and will likely be fixed. “This is the largest active 4G LTE network, you’re going to have some hiccups,” he noted.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Sonic Made Christmas Extra Special

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Tanya Valdez this Christmas helped create a Sonic the Hedgehog Christmas tree to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the character. The design is of even more special significance to her, because of a connection to her now departed father.

“This tree is also very special because my dad came to visit us Sunday evening, as we were working on the tree,” said Valdez. “It was nice to be able to work on Sonic Christmas ornaments and chat with my parents. I know Tito was very proud of the tree and one of the last things my dad said, as he left our house was, ‘That’s one heck of a tree. Now, if he could only do Mickey Mouse.’ We found that very humorous because, although my father is the one that got me into gaming, he doesn’t know a lot of video game characters. He passed away the next morning. Without getting too deep into the story, this should convey how special this tree is.”

Source: 8bitfix.com

Shenmue MMO Closed

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Reports are that the MMORPG Shenmue City has ceased after a year on the Japanese market. The decision was announced the day after Christmas on the official website for the game.

The game, published by Sunsoft and overseen by Sega, was available on the Mobage mobile gaming platform. While the game was going to come to the Yahoo! Mobage system (designed to attract American developers) it never came to the browser-based system and never did come to the U.S.

Source: Andriasang