Capcom Christmas Community Day

On Saturday 10th December we’re throwing open the doors and giving you the chance to play some of the up coming games from next year’s line up including Street Fighter x Tekken, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City and Asura’s Wrath!

More info here
When? Noon to 5pm, Satudday 10th December 2011
Where? The City Arts & Music Project, 70 – 74 City Rd, London, EC1Y 2BJ
How much? Free! (Register on the Capcom forums and then PM the UK community manager Fonix)

Richard Garriott – Tales of Fantasy and the Final Frontier

Richard’s passion for exploration has taken him from underwater explorations of the Titanic, to hunting meteors in Antarctica, each adventure giving him new stories to tell but also firmly rooted in exploring the significant science that can come from these activities. His life long dream to explore space drove him to create new ventures to make it possible, such as the X-Prize and Space Adventures Ltd. In 2008 Richard realized a lifelong dream by visiting the International Space Station.

More info here
When? 6:30PM, 14 December 2011
Where? ArtsTwo Lecture Theatre, Mile End Campus, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, E1 4NS
How much? Free! (But you have to book in advance)

Hear tracks from LA Noire performed live

Jazz FM will host a special evening at historic Grade II listed Cobden Private Club on Friday 2nd December with a unique performance by The Real Tuesday Weld, the musical minds behind songs sung by character Elsa Lichtman in the game and performed by real life German singer Claudia Brucken; (I Always Kill) The Things I Love, Guilty and Torched Song.

More info here
When? 9pm – 1am, 2nd December 2011
Where? Cobden Club, 170 Kensal Road, London, W10 5BN
How much? £10. (Buy tickets)

Entry to each session will be on a strictly first come, first served basis. Simply turn up on the day and hope you’ve arrived early enough to get in.

Beat ‘em ups to play at the event:

• Street Fighter X Tekken
• Tekken Tag Tournament 2
• Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade edition
• Tekken 6
• Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3
• SoulCalibur V
• Street Fighter 3rd Strike

Each session will also feature an 8 person, single-elimination tournament for Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Arcade and SoulCalibur V. There will be prizes for the tournament winners and some of the matches will be streamed live. You can also meet Harada-San, the creator of Tekken and watch some of the UK’s top players fighting it out in the exhibition matches.

There will be free bowling, pool, refreshments and free-play arcade machines on hand if you fancy a break from all the fighting games. Nice :-)

So who’s planning on coming along then?

Update 1st Dec 2011: Ono-San, producer of Tekken will now be joining Harada-San at this event and will be available for signing. If you can’t make the event you can watch via a livestream on http://www.twitch.tv/namcobandaiuk from 10am.

Play Motorstorm Apocalypse multiplayer free for 7 days from today. Available now on the PlayStation Store, this is a 7-day trail of Motostorm Apocalypse multiplayer component. Featuring 16-player online races, 2-player split screen, 35 races and 5 of the 13 vehicle types available for customisation. You will be able to play until Thursday July 7 at 10:00 BST.

EA Canada is holding a live chat with the SSX team from 7pm this evening. The 40 minute USTREAM event will feature:

• Reveal of the next SSX character
• Producer Todd Batty demoing 3 tracks
• Q&A from people watching on Usteam and the SSX community

I’ll be turning in this evening and I hope you all will be too. It’s great to see the SSX franchise being revived. After chatting with Todd Batty at this year’s E3 Expo, I’m confident the game is in good hands :-)

World of Warcraft is now free to play, sort of. Following hot on the heels of Team Fortress 2 becoming completely free to play, Activision Blizzard has now followed suit, but there is a catch. You can play the game for as long as you like until your character(s) reach level 20. Other restrictions include:

• Players can’t create of join guilds
• Player-to-player trading is blocked
• Trade skills max out at 100
• Gold maxes out at 10

Also every WoW player now has access to the Burning Crusade expansion, as it’s been added to everyone’s account for free. That’s very generous of Activision Blizzard.

Bodycount from Codemasters now has a release date. Coming out on the 2nd September 2011 in the UK, Bodycount is the latest game from the creators of the bombastic shooting fest that was Black. If you like guns and shooting things then you’re going to love Bodycount. I got some hands-on time with the game at E3 2011, so look out for my preview.

Angry Birds hits Windows Phone 7 today. It’s now available to download from the Windows Phone marketplace. It’s free to try and $2.99 to buy. You get 165 levels of pig bashing fun for $2.99, which isn’t bad.

Our friends over at Citizen Game are holding a Gran Turismo 5 gaming night, starting at 8pm (BST) on the 30th June 2011. Make sure that the game is fully patched first, as there have been quite a few very hefty patches since its release. Best of luck beating their star driver, Joseph Barron (Gamertag: Wonderboy46)

To round off the news today, we have a nice gameplay trailer from Capcom’s upcoming Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City:

According to the developer – Blue Castle Games – Dead Rising 2: Off The Record is a re-envisioning of Dead Rising 2. So same locations (plus 1 new area), different gameplay.

With the Resident Evil games undergoing a re-envisioning in the form of Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, I wonder what Capcom game is next? Anyone care to hazard a guess?

Dead Rising 2: Off The Record is due for release during Autumn 2011

…experience a retelling of classic moments from past titles Resident Evil™ 2 and Resident Evil™ 3 and watch the events unfolding from the menacing perspective of the Umbrella Security Service, giving fans the chance to rewrite the history of the Raccoon City outbreak.

I really, really hope Capcom finally fix the crappy, sluggish and generally rubbish character controls that infects every Resident Evil game. I mean, seriously, make the characters more responsive and allow them to run and shoot at the same time. These changes would make the Resi games bloody brilliant.

Rehashing “classic bits” from the older Resi games smacks of laziness on the part of the developers. Couldn’t they have come up with something new? It’s not exactly hard now is it. Take a remote city/town somewhere. Concoct some tragic/accidental/deliberate T-virus outbreak sub-plot, add in a bit of Wesker and voilà, zombies a plenty!

Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City will be out sometime during winter 2011 on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC.

TIKIPODltd also gave me a brilliant Black Tiger mug as a birthday present a few years ago which I use to hold my daily cuppa. It’s a lovely looking mug :-)

Time to go and immerse yourself in a bit of gaming history and check out Black Tiger.

For those of you that are interested, you can keep track of the Black Tiger for M.A.M.E. world record highscore.

Black Tiger is available now for 800 Wii points on the Nintendo Wii.

The pack also includes new weapons and combos such as “zap and shine” and the “reaper” as well as adding co-op functionality. Yes, you read that correctly. Case West finally adds the long awaited co-op action to Dead Rising. Awesome! Just imagine how much Zombies killing mayhem two people will be able to unleash. However, during single-player mode the AI will take control of Frank West. Interestingly enough, while Frank is in this mode he will be invincible. Now that could be very handy.

Check out the gameplay trailer to see an awful lot of co-op Zombie killing action from Case West.

Capcom haven’t announced a release date or price other than it will be out in Dec 2010. As soon as I get more information, I’ll update this post.

Dead Rising 2: Case West is released on the 27th Dec 2010 on Xbox 360 for 800 Microsoft Points.

Update 13th Dec 2010: Added confirmed release date and price.

Well that’s me, every time I play the Dead Rising games. I want to be able to run around the malls in piece and quiet without having those irritating Zombies everywhere. I also want to save the survivors with enough time to do a bit of shopping without the Zombies trying to eat my face (or my companion’s faces for that matter).

Here’s the problem though. There’s too many frickin’ Zombies to kill. You clear an area, leave and come back later and BAM!!! The place is crawling with Zombies again. Aaaggghhh, all that time spent killing totally wasted. Time to clear the area again.

And so the battle to kill all the Zombies continues. One I can can never win, I know that, but it doesn’t mean I don’t want to keep trying.

I admit that I may have a little bit of an obsessive compulsive problem with the Dead Rising games. I find them difficult to play because of this. Which is strange as I love gore, Zombies, weapons and violence (just in games people, not in real life). In theory then, the Dead Rising games should be perfect for me. In practice not so much.

I’ve noticed that this aspect of my personality has affected other games, but to a lesser extent. Assassin’s Creed II for instance. I’ve collected every feather, found every money stash, done every mission, bought every weapon and bit of armour…in short, I’ve done everything. Why? Because i like seeing the word “completed” and 100% littered across the stats screen. It gives me a warm, fuzzy, sense of progress feeling. Just like levelling-up does.

Are there any games that people feel that they’ve got a bit obsessive or compulsive over? Or is it just me?

And since it’s just out today for our friends in the US, here are my top 7 spoiler-free tips for surviving my favourite zombocalypse:

1. Take the fire axe: There’s one just outside the door to the security room. The Defiler (sledgehammer + fire axe) and the Spiked Bat (baseball bat + nails) are your two survival staples. Never leave home without them.
2. Level up before seriously attempting the story. Sure you could do all the case files and get The Facts, but it’s a lot harder when you have a puny health bar and no dodging ability. Play a good chunk of the game just saving people and laughing at combo weapons. You’ll find the case files much more relaxing.



3. Make $$$ Fast. Play ranked Terror is Reality matches to rack up the in-game winnings. If you want to play with all the vehicles in the game, you’re gonna need a whole lot of cash. Destroying ATMs will net you $2500 a pop and I’ve heard that playing the $1000 slots with all three gambling magazines is a fantastic way to rack up a million.
4. Meet The Contestant. This is an early mission which will unlock the motorcycle mod shop. Who doesn’t want to race down the strip on a slicecycle, right? Easiest way I’ve found to defeat this psycho is to get him trapped on the edges of the Royal Flush Plaza entrance and then wallop the crap out of the back of his head. Some might call this an exploit? I say it’s tactical use of the environment
5. Don’t worry about Zombrex. It’s surprisingly easy to get Zombrex for little Katey. The first one is practically dropped in your lap. The second comes from the Code Blue mission – a nice straight escort. For the third, DON’T bother with the postman unless you have loads of health and a decent ranged weapon. Another mission will open up shortly after the postal service one – bring some food to a hungry guy in a restaurant and he’ll trade you some Zombrex. The rest are easily purchased from the pawnshop with the winnings from a couple of TiR matches.



6. Unlock the Underground. I know my first tip was to skip the case files but Case 2-1 will unlock the underground area for you and none of those early cases will give you trouble. Okay, technically there’s no real NEED for the underground area… but you’ll find one of those great RAMSTERBALLS to run around squashing zombies in :D
7. Open the shortcut. On Day 2 you’ll get a mission called Wilted Flower. Bring her a drink and take her home – you’ll open up a fast route from the South Plaza to the Safe House

I could go on but half the fun of this game lies in working out strategies for yourself. What are your top survival tips for Dead Rising 2?

Not that’s a lot of Zombie killing! One of the big features of Dead Rising 2 is the ability to customise your Zombie killing weapons using duct tape. If you don’t understand just how awesome duct tap is, check out these pictures:

This aircraft was badly mauled by a bear (hunting for the food left inside). After using several crates of duct tape the pilot had fixed up the aircraft and flew it home. Yes, that’s right, flew it home.

Now just imagine what weapons you’ll be able to produce in Dead Rising 2 with duct tape.

Dead Rising 2 is released on the 24th Sep 2010 on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.