Hoecs Games

Microsoft wants game developers to make games for its next cell phone platform, Windows Phone 7. And, today, Kotaku got a look at demos of games you might play (or make) on them... to help me raise my Gamerscore. More »

Pink-haired bounty-hunting cat-girl Kit Ballard is the star of Blade Kitten, a PlayStation Network platformer that's less furry than its 2D/3D platformer predecessors Crash Bandicoot and Klonoa, but very promising given the mental comparisons I made while playing the game. More »

The four multiplayer maps released in Aliens vs. Predator's Special Edition will be available to the general public as DLC beginning next Thursday, March 18. The Swarm Map Pack will run you $7. More »

This Wednesday, God of War III director Stig Asmussen joins us live from the Game Developers Conference on our weekly podcast to take your calls. More »

Black. I feel like my own opinion of Criterion's first-person shooter have been well-established... well, provided you listen to the podcast, anyway. It's weird to me that Codemasters is really pushing its new first-person shooter, Bodycount, as being from the "co-creator and designer of Black," Stuart Black. Black (the game) didn't exactly go on to leave an especially lasting impact on shooters. Heck, I'd expect that a decent number of people don't even remember it at all. But I digress.

Today, Codemasters released two screenshots of the game, which... uh... look a lot like Black to me. Sadly, there's no mention of this being "gunporn 2.0" and I haven't seen anything close to "bullets are our babies" in the released material. That said, the provided quotes say the exact right things that I want to see when someone says they're making a first-person shooter. Here's one from the game's executive producer, Tom Gillo:

“Our core focus for Bodycount is to deliver best-in-class gun play that places the gamer at the heart of the experience,” said Executive Producer Tom Gillo. “From the jaw-dropping devastation caused by firing into enemies or shredding the world around you in a hail of bullets, Bodycount will crystalize that moment of pulling the trigger into an exhilarating sensory overload of action.”

Firing guns into enemy targets should feel positively devastating. Firing a gun should feel like an intensely destructive act. That's one of the things that Black came closest to delivering on, but the constant inclusion of exploding barrels made it all feel like a photo hunt game. "Find the exploding barrel, shoot it, and move forward!"

Of course, that all sounds a bit more harsh than it should. Black was actually a really neat game, in spots. It just felt like it was being held back somehow, like the design of the levels and environments didn't quite mesh with the firearms well enough.

If there's anything that signifies that this game is coming from dudes who worked on Black, it's this Stuart Black quote:

"If Race Driver: GRID was all about the purity of racing, then everything in Bodycount is absolutely centered on the bullet and its impact on the world."

Yep. That sounds about right. The game is currently set for release in Q1 2011 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Acknowledging that as many as 20 million (of its 25 million players) "no longer [derive] pleasure from blowing up people hiding in the cockpit or on top of the crane," Modern Warfare 2's creators say new map help is OTW. More »

Mass Effect 2's newest available firearm spits electrical bolts and looks like someone weaponized a jumper cable from a fetish dungeon. If I knew what one of those looked like. A fetish dungeon, I mean. More »

Fresh off of the SuperTwitter Hotwire 8000 (our proprietary device that lets us read Twitter posts and turn them into something resembling "news") is a post from Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling, which points people to mapathy.com. Image below!

So in case you were wondering when that first Modern Warfare 2 map pack was going to hit on 360, there you go. March 30. Unless I'm reading this wrong, of course. I mean, it could be anything, right? Right?

Nintendo is making a big deal of upcoming Nintendo DS game WarioWare D.I.Y. at this year's Game Developers Conference, handing out miniature Warios that are not only easy to build, but make a great distraction when people are trying to post. More »

Players who tore through the content of Sony's epic PlayStation 3 role-playing game White Knight Chronicles should be extremely pleased with the news that Sony is delivering weekly free downloadable quests through the end of June. More »