Heavy Duty Website Goes Live - Vast amounts of content, numerous unique feature sets in the mix of compelling strategy and fast-paced action

Heavy Duty Website Goes Live

Vast amounts of content, numerous unique feature sets in the mix of compelling strategy and fast-paced action available on http://hd.akella.com/.

Akella is pleased to announce the launch of the Heavy Duty official website that shows off latest assets and storyline additions. Visitors can now go online to http://hd.akella.com/ to get an in-depth look at game features, browse and download screenshots and videos (both promotional and in-game). The website also provides an integral insight into the game content (via fact sheet and FAQs) and features what others are saying about Heavy Duty .

The website also contains Forum section where players will be able to keep up with and discuss all the latest news, screenshots and videos that are released as development continues.

The site also features a news section to keep all fans up to date. Stay tuned as more updates are coming soon!

About Heavy Duty

With the spread of mankind throughout the galaxy new colonies had to be found in the vast reaches of space. Colonists and scientists made the first landings, tasked with setting up settlements for others to follow. These colonized planets are ruled by rival corporations entrusted by the governments of Earth to protect its citizens from harm.

Little did they think from where that danger might manifest itself...

On the frontiers of the human incursion into space hostile alien forces have made themselves known, and they aren't willing to share. Beholden to the organizations in charge of this fragile frontier is the militarized installation: Heavy Duty. Their task: to halt the advance of the alien menace at all costs.

This beautiful-looking game features many advanced technologies allowing new scope in the field of action/strategy games. Featuring the first full planet simulation the player can zoom in from the depths of space to the smallest blade of grass waving in the breeze next to a running stream.

Key features:

• Advanced graphical engine providing visual scale not seen before in real-time action strategy.
  
• Reverse kinematics mean the end of scripted animation and make sure that characters interact with the world on a believable level.
  
• Manage the base, characters and finances as you battle to keep the alien menace at bay.
  
• Engage the enemy in multiple ways from dogfights in the skies with UFOs, to ground-based cleanup operations after wrecked UFOs crash planetside as well as the whole-scale assault of alien bases or the defence of your own.
  
• Fully deformable terrain provides a new tactical challenge – blow craters in the ground to provide your units with cover.
  

Eidos breathes soul into new Nintendo DS title Soul Bubbles

Eidos breathes soul into new Nintendo DS title Soul Bubbles

Eidos Interactive, creators of some of the world’s leading videogame properties, is pleased to announce a new phenomenon to come to the Nintendo DS entitled Soul Bubbles.



In Soul Bubbles the player controls a young shaman apprentice, who is entrusted with saving lost “souls” and guiding them to safety. He must protect these fragile beings from the hostile and dangerous world around them, and he does this by creating protective bubbles to keep the spirits safe.

“This will be THE new phenomenon on the Nintendo DS,” said Brand Manager Ray Livingston. “Every single person who has picked up this game has fallen in love with it instantly. We can’t wait to introduce the world to Soul Bubbles.”

Manipulate your bubbles by first drawing them, then deflating them, cutting them or joining them to other bubbles, filling them with water or gas; then escape traps, extinguish fires and avoid all the sticky or dangerous surfaces that will slow the bubbles down.

The game features 8 worlds, with over 40 levels to explore which will challenge the shaman in a variety of ways – and push the physics capabilities of the Nintendo DS to the max. Soul Bubbles is designed with the next generation of casual gamers in mind.

EA Signs Multiyear Agreement With Massive to Offer Dynamic In-Game Advertising on Titles for Xbox 360 and Windows-Based PC Platforms

EA Signs Multiyear Agreement With Massive to Offer Dynamic In-Game Advertising on Titles for Xbox 360 and Windows-Based PC Platforms

Agreement enables integration of in-game advertising and premium video game content into long-term campaign planning and media buying processes.

Electronic Arts and Massive Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corp. and a leading network for video game advertising, today announced an expansion and two-year extension of their agreement to offer dynamic in-game advertising for EA video games. The new global agreement provides unprecedented opportunities for advertisers to engage with EA’s highly coveted audience — especially males ages 18 to 34 — through its roster of blockbuster games on the Xbox 360™ platform and exclusive rights to a majority of EA’s premium PC products.

With over three years of experience in dynamically serving advertisements in video games, Massive is the definitive in-game advertising solution for advertisers around the world, including Ford Motor Co. in the U.S., Rogers in Canada, and Puma in Europe. Massive’s long-standing relationship with EA, publisher of many of the world’s most popular games, provides advertisers with extensive reach through EA’s portfolio of premium content video games. This agreement represents a critical point of differentiation for Massive as the in-game advertising medium continues its momentum as a more attractive and effective medium compared with traditional forms of established advertising.

With the latest agreement, EA will further expand the opportunities available to advertisers by extending the participation of current titles in the Massive network as well as incorporating additional, highly anticipated games over the course of the deal. The wide range of EA content that will be available in the Massive network includes the next two iterations of popular EA SPORTS™ franchises including Madden NFL* football, NBA LIVE basketball, NASCAR* ® racing and NHL® hockey.

Massive will continue to be the exclusive in-game ad network for PC and Xbox 360 platforms of the world’s largest racing franchise, EA’s Need For Speed™, including current live titles Need for Speed Carbon and Need for Speed ProStreet. Massive is also working with marketers to incorporate dynamic advertising into another popular EA racing title, Burnout™ Paradise.

“We continue to utilize the breadth and depth of Massive’s content to market a range of our clients’ key brands,” said Brian Bos, senior vice president, Convergence Director, Mindshare - Team Detroit. “With this expanded partnership, we will be able to plan dynamic in-game campaigns several years out, which is critical in making Massive’s content platform a more integral part of our video game marketing strategy.”

“EA strongly believes that dynamic in-game advertising is an important growth area for our business, and is one of many opportunities we are pursuing in growing the advertising market,” said Kathy Vrabeck, president of the Casual Entertainment Label at EA. “We selected Massive because they are the industry leader in this space with a global sales footprint, solid brand recognition and in-depth experience in video game advertising.”

By providing certainty around Massive’s ad inventory for years into the future, the multiyear agreement enables advertisers to plan in-game advertising on a calendar year basis as part of a holistic campaign development process alongside other mediums such as TV, online and print media.

Rouwen Bastian, Coordinator European Media Strategies at Opel said: “In-game advertising plays an essential role for us in reaching today’s young adult consumers. The multi-year agreement between Massive and EA makes it possible for us to make greater strategic use of in-game advertising by incorporating it into the same long-term planning as other media forms.”

Richard Dance, Group Account Director at MindShare Interaction UK, said: “The growing channel of in-game advertising provides an exciting and creative medium in which to work. Although we are only scratching the surface with regards to the opportunities it provides, more and more of our clients are keen to include in-game advertising as a part of their multichannel strategy.”

“Our latest agreement with EA expands advertisers’ unprecedented access to EA’s world-class franchises to reach young male gamers around the world,” said Cory Van Arsdale, CEO of Massive. “This multiyear partnership reflects both the maturity of the dynamic in-game advertising medium and the benefits that our network continues to deliver for both publishers and advertisers.”

Call for Heroes: Pompolic Wars for Nintendo Wii

Data Design Interactive a successful video games publisher, games developer and owner of the Popcorn Arcade label, is pleased to release the first batch of screenshots from the Nintendo Wii version of “Call for Heroes: Pompolic Wars.”. The game is a 3D RPG action title set in a fantasy world and developed by Quotix Software, a games developer based in Serbia and Montenegro. Call for Heroes: Pompolic Wars for Wii is due for release in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Story:

Call for Heroes: Pompolic Wars is a third-person action game with RPG elements. The game places players in a fantasy medieval world, where a dimensional portal to the Outer Worlds has opened, and an enemy from the darkness has encroached upon the world. Led by a demon named Pompolic, the armies of demonic hordes have taken over most of the planet. With mysterious origins, Pompolic’s malevolent spiritual being possesses supernatural powers.

His desire is to possess the people and turn them into minions of his dark army, as he wields his power through his servants, the Dark Souls. These Dark Souls - protected by a horde of monsters - are poisoning the minds of his victims and making them slaves of evil. The denizens of this world are on the edge of total annihilation. However, a little hope still exists in the heart of the remaining citizens.

They believe that there are brave hearts who can save the world from the source of the evil power. If the Dark Souls were to be captured, the onslaught would stop, and Pompolic would be defeated; the call for heroes is made...

Features

· 2 unique characters to choose from

· Each character has unique weapons, items and special abilities

· Characters gain experience which will help them to upgrade strength, armour and health

· 15 special abilities per character

· Fantasy/medieval type world divided into 15 levels

· 18 different types of monsters and 3 bosses at the end

For more information on “Call for Heroes: Pompolic Wars” please visit the Data Design website: http://ddigames.com/pompolic

Sho Online PC video game closed beta Test kicks off

Sho Online Beta Test kicks off with a fresh start!

Sho Onine, Lizard Interactive's second global service, kicks off with 1,000 testers from all over the world..

SSang-Wook Lee, CEO of Lizard Interactive Co., Ltd., announced today that Sho Online has successfully launched its Closed Beta Test (CBT).

The 1st CBT of Sho Online has launched 18th of March will continue until the 25th of March 2008 (GMT). Selected testers will have chance to take a first peek at what Sho Online is made of. So far 1,000 testers are testing the game under the stable service and server condition. Along with the promising result, Sho Online Team is planning to Invite 1000 more CBT users.(Soon will be posted through the official website www.shoonline.net )

Sho Online is also executing a CBT Event for users to win Nintendo DSL. Testers have to simply submit bug reports within the game or submit proud screenshots of their game play. It is a simple event to boost up the active participation and It also shows Sho Online project team’s great effort to revised the game to its perfection.

CEO Sang-Wook Lee said “I would like to thank all gamers who have applied for Sho Online CBT. With their support, we are off to a promising start. For those who couldn’t join our 1st CBT, We will try our best make more opportunity for more users to be part of the CBT. Finally, as CBT progresses, we will implement well-systemized game management and various updates to provide better service for you.”

‘Sho Online’ is 3D MMORPG developed based on true Chinese epic tale of the brutal and merciless war which took place between the two nations ‘Yin’ and ‘Zhou’, the game will take you to the mystic world of Taoism in the 11th century BC.

Players start the game by selecting the dynasty of their choice between Yin and Zhao. Once players choose their destiny, all must fight with honor to defend and conquer the 80 mutual territories based on true historical locations. More territories you gain more hunting grounds you secure for your nation. Players are to expand their territories by going through various quests and challenges that they encounter throughout the game. Players will fight for their fame, wealth, and honor till the day they are acknowledged as heroes. Depending on their active participation at the battle ground, rewards and earned fame will differ from one another.

Sho Online brings some of its unique and strong features. War System between the two rival dynasties naturally leads players to bond within their own community, but hostility to grow towards their enemy. When defending and attacking the enemy territory, players can transform into siege weapon such as catapult, ballista, and many more.

Games also may find other features such as differed Pet System and Rare Items & Enchant System enjoyable. Pets in Sho Online grow, transform, assist in combat, and, of course, its ride-able while Rare Items & Enchant System offers its players to test their nerves and luck. Player will get to choose to enchant and upgrade an item in exchange for possibility of loosing it even though it may be rare that everyone desires.

For further information on Sho Online, a globally played game, please visit www.shoonline.net.

Free Mac game - Mac Arcade

Reflexive announces new Mac Arcade

Reflexive Entertainment is proud to announce the unveiling of Reflexive Mac Arcade, a new extension of Reflexive.com offering casual games to Mac enthusiasts and a special free game for everyone who visits during the grand opening.

Reflexive Entertainment is proud to unveil its new Mac Arcade. Featuring a growing catalog that already contains over 70 games for the Mac, Reflexive's Mac Arcade brings the fun of casual and downloadable games to Mac users everywhere.

"We're very excited to be expanding the market and making Mac games available to the ever increasing number of Mac users," said Reflexive CEO Lars Brubaker. "It's been a long time coming and something that we've put a lot of effort into as we think Mac users have waited long enough to have a great destination to find the latest fun Mac games."

As an extra enticement for visitors to come and check out the new Reflexive Mac Arcade, Reflexive is also giving away one of it's own Mac games, Big Kahuna Reef.

Big Kahuna Reef is the first game in the best-selling Big Kahuna series, which has been one of the most popular franchises in the casual games industry over the last few years. Featuring addictive play in a gorgeous underwater setting, Big Kahuna Reef is mesmerizing fun that will be free to everyone who visits the Reflexive Mac Arcade at www.reflexive.com between now and the end of April.

In addition to opening up the new Mac Arcade and giving away a free game, Reflexive is also empowering everyone to create their own Mac Arcade. As part of the launch of the Mac Arcade section on Reflexive.com, Reflexive has added Mac games to the white-label affiliate program GameCenterSolution. Using GameCenterSolution has always enabled webmasters to offer PC games to their website visitors, and beginning today, Mac games are now also available to all affiliates of GameCenterSolution.

All combined, it's three things that Reflexive Entertainment is excited to be announcing at the same time in hopes of bringing just a little more gaming fun to the Mac.
- New casual game arcade for Mac users
- Free Mac game, Big Kahuna Reef, for all visitors during the grand opening
- Mac games added to the white-label affiliate program GameCenterSolution

Turning Point - Fall of Liberty Design a secret weapon competition

One of the main features of Turning Point™: Fall Of Liberty™ lies in its terrifying depictions of weaponry from a technologically advanced Nazi force.

We'd like to invite you to participate in our Turning Point: Fall of Liberty "Design A Secret Weapon" competition, where you have an unique opportunity to submit your vision of a devastating secret weapon and possibly win fantastic prizes for your efforts!

We are looking for outlandish and creative new designs for all sorts of weapons: planes, tanks, rifles, machine guns, ships, submarines, or whatever else you can imagine. Please don't think you are restricted to designing weapons just for the Germans either. If you have a weapon idea for the Resistance we'd love to see that too!

The contest winner receives a Limited Edition lithograph of Turning Point game art signed by creator Matt Hall along with an XBOX 360 Special Edition of the game. Runners-up win their choice of 360, PS3 or PC standard versions of the game.

In order to enter the competition, either email us a picture of your weapon to competition@codemasters.com with the subject title "Secret Weapon", or, using an image-hosting website of your choice, post it in this forum thread: http://community.codemasters.com/forum/showthread.php?t=262733

For more information and inspiration on Turning Point please go to www.codemasters.co.uk/turningpoint.

Video games release dates 2008 Microsoft XBox 360 Sony PlayStation Nintendo Wii

Games Industy provide a list of games platforms and publisher details for Computer and video games to be released in 2008.

Read the list here...

No Nintendo Wii version and no demo planned for Rainbow Six Vegas 2

Ubisoft will likely steer clear of hardcore shooters because the market is too narrow for it to be a viable business choice said Rainbow Six Vegas 2 game designer Phil Therien.

Therien had been asked whether the company planned to reintroduce more realistic shooters such as the original Ghost Recon on current-generation hardware.

He also revealed that there won't be a demo version of Vegas 2.

"We took the decision to spend our time on polishing the game and the demo option was cut," he said.

"It's really time-consuming to create a demo and we needed the dev time to finish our game."

He also explained that four-player co-op was reduced to two-player because the single-player levels couldn't easily support four players.

Therien says that there are virtually no differences between the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of Vegas 2 - and at the moment there are no plans for working on the Nintendo Wii.

Read Eurogamer's LiveText Interview with Philippe Therien, Game Designer on Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2.

Read through the dialogue below.

Vegas 2 is due out on 20th March for PS3 and 360 and on 17th April for PC, and you can check out our review early next week.

Full Q and A can be read here

Europa Universalis: Rome PC Strategy game Fact Sheet

Experience one of the most defining periods in world history in an experience crafted by the masters of Grand Strategy. The greatest cultural and military civilizations are brought to life through this epic title rife with great strategic and tactical depth.

Europa Universalis: Rome will cover the time period from the first Punic War to the start of the true Empire. Players will have thousand of gameplay choices ranging from country, culture, provincial and character options to name but a few, making each and every game infinitely customizable and truly unique.

"Europa Universalis: Rome combines the best of the Empire Building, Conquest and Warfare genres, wrapped into a title that contains all main characteristics of a typical Paradox Interactive game", said Johan Andersson, Director of Development. "This project has the potential to become the most talked about grand strategy game to date."



Key Features

• Fully 3D map with integrated graphics and detailed topography
  
• Start at any date between 280 B.C. and 27 B.C.
  
• Choose between 10 different cultures, including the Roman, Celtic, Greek and Egyptian civili zations, with more than 53 playable factions on a map spanning hundreds of provinces.
  
• Watch your characters develop new traits through political intrigue and various interactions with thousands of other characters.
  
• Trade, negotiate or fight with your neighbours and advance your technologies to unite the Mediterranean World.
  
• Robust multiplayer allows you to challenge up to 32 players either competitively or in co-op mode.
  

System requirements
VISTA COMPATIBLE
Microsoft Windows XP/2000
1.9 Ghz Intel Pen tium or similar
AMD 512mb
RAM Direct X 9.0c
128mb compatible video card & support for pixelshader 2.0

More information here