AFC North Team and Player ratings in Madden NFL 10 season preview

It is a hot summer, but stay cool in a football state of mind as the Madden NFL 10 team previews continue. What division will be the toughest this year? Can the Pittsburgh Steelers defend their title? What teams made the best moves to bolster their roster during the off season? See how your favorite team and players will fair – according to the Madden NFL 10 Season Preview.

So far, we’ve tackled previews from all the NFC teams, and now it’s time to take a look at the AFC. We continue our look at each team’s overall rating and individual player ratings with a focus on the rough and tough AFC North division. In addition to the player ratings, a wealth of team-specific assets will be made available, for both the Xbox 360, PLAYSTATION 3, and Wii versions of Madden NFL 10.
Everything culminates on August 3rd, where Madden NFL 10 will predict the 2009 NFL division winners, season MVP, and more.

To view the overall team ratings for the Ravens, Steelers, Browns and Bengals, as well as download the complete team roster ratings, visit the official Madden NFL 10 website below:

•Madden NFL 10 Season Preview

Up next week: The AFC South

Madden NFL 10 will be available on the Xbox 360 video game system from Microsoft, PlayStation 2 and PLAYSTATION 3 computer entertainment systems, Nintendo Wii, PSP (PlayStation Portable) handheld entertainment system and is rated E for Everyone by the ESRB.

For more information about Madden NFL 10, visit http://maddennfl.easports.com/.

Dragon Quest IX lifts Square Enix stock

Square Enix saw its Tokyo stock rating upgraded by Cosmo Securities, which lifted the Japanese based videogame maker to "neutral plus" from the "neutral" rating it has maintained since November 26.

The shares rose JPY 60 (USD 0.57), or 1.9 per cent, to close at JPY 3210 (USD 30.7) on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and much of the improvement is being put down to the performance of the company's Dragon Quest IX DS title, which sold 5 million units and will produce JPY 20 billion (USD 190 million) in revenue, Cosmo Securities analyst Takashi Oka reported. "It's not surprising Dragon Quest IX for the portable console sold twice as many units as a version for stationary game machines,'' Oka wrote, according to Bloomberg. The Cosmo Securities report also claimed that the company's net income for the year ending in March 2009 will almost double to JPY 17.4 billion (USD 166.9 million), 45 per cent higher than the company's target of JPY 12 billion (USD 115.1 million).

This comes after the company recently reported a profit of JPY 9.2 billion (USD 88.5 million) for fiscal year 2007, a 20.9 per cent fall from the previous year.

Source: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/

2K Games And Bethesda Softworks Announce BioShock & The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Bundle Now Available

2K Games and Bethesda Softworks, a ZeniMax Media company, announce that the BioShock & The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Bundle is now available in shops across the UK for a suggested retail price of £29.99 for the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and £19.99 for Windows PC.

Creating a value-rich package, the BioShock & The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Bundle combines 2006 Game of the Year winner The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion with 2007 Game of the Year winner BioShock - two games with a combined bounty of more than 80 Game of the Year awards from the industry’s top publications. In addition to having achieved critical success and Platinum Hits status, both games rank among the bestselling titles on Xbox 360.

BioShock is the genetically enhanced shooter that weaves intricate storytelling with an intense and exciting journey through a decaying underwater Art Deco utopia gone mad. Caught between powerful forces and hunted down by mutated citizens, gamers are not only armed with a complete arsenal from simple revolvers to chemical throwers, but are forced to genetically modify their own DNA to use themselves as a deadly weapon.

Taking the world by storm in 2006, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion set a new benchmark for role-playing experiences for current generation gaming. Lush visuals, expansive worlds and limitless character customization combine with unprecedented levels of player freedom and NPC interaction to form one of the most successful and critically acclaimed games ever created.

The BioShock & The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Bundle is rated M by the ESRB. For more information on BioShock please visit www.bioshockgame.com. For more information on Oblivion please visit www.elderscrolls.com.

Hudson Entertainment brings Wii owners face to face with spirits of the dead in 'Calling'

Hudson Entertainment will bring players face to face with death as they roam an alternate existence in an attempt to survive Calling. The adventure horror title is set to be published by Hudson Entertainment, the North and South American publishing arm of HUDSON SOFT, and will be exclusive to Nintendo Wii in 2010.

“Players will be asked to use their wits and senses to survive the world of Calling,” said Mike Pepe, Director of Marketing of Hudson Entertainment. “It is a game that revolves around real people and real emotions – no chain saws or suits of armor. The game is traditional survival horror at its finest.”

In Calling, players begin by visiting a mysterious “Black Page” website with a simple number counter. Some say it is a bridge to something sinister; the counter indicating the number of people who have died after visiting the page. It is said that people who have visited the site and witness a certain event are drawn into a mysterious space compiled of the memories of the dead - the space between life and death. Someone or something is drawing the living there for a reason, and it is up to the player to discover the horrifying truth. In order to do so, players will use various equipment including flash lights, phones, and other items to navigate and escape the Calling.

Throughout the game players will visit various parts of the Calling world. Memories of houses, schools, hospitals and more bring players closer to either an escape or an untimely death. Players will solve puzzles, search and interact with objects, and ultimately try to avoid the inhabitance of this alternative existance.

For more information on Calling, as well as other titles from Hudson Entertainment, please visit www.hudsonent.com.

Yoga for the Wii system to Feature International Model Anja Rubik!

JoWooD Productions and DreamCatcher Games are pleased to announce that top model Anja Rubik will be featured in their upcoming Wii title Yoga (http://anjarubik.com). A very enthusiastic yoga practitioner, Anja will not only grace the cover, but also accompanies players during numerous relaxing Yoga exercises, providing player motivation throughout the game. Anja Rubik is considered one of the upcoming stars of the model scene and is ranked among the top 15 international supermodels.

“We’ve invested a lot in creating a fun and authentic Yoga title for Wii suitable for everyone. Regardless of your age or gender, anyone who is interested in learning more about this ancient Indian philosophy will love this game.” says Markus Reutner, Marketing manager JoWooD Productions. “Anja Rubik embodies the spirit of Yoga and thus is the perfect guide to increase motivation and promote the practice of this peaceful fitness regime.”

Yoga for the Wii system offers an entirely new fitness and lifestyle experience. It enriches your living room with this ancient art and you can strengthen your body, mind and spirit while training at home. Thanks to the combination of state of the art graphics and the Wii Balance Board™ accessory, this game leads to a brand new fitness-gaming experience.

About Yoga for the Wii system:

Anja Rubik and a 3D animated Yoga guru guide you through the most important parts of the game and offer useful information on both the individual exercises and the philosophical basis behind yoga. Yoga encourages the player to take steps to improve his or her own health and to restore and maintain their own state of well-being. The game supports a wide range of body positions, and the Balance Board provides the player with immediate feedback. The yoga guru guides you through poses in a gentle introduction into this fascinating world.

It's simple for you to develop your own, customised yoga exercise plan and monitor your progress!

Yoga is designed to stand out from the considerable range of “fitness games“ out there and shows a new, modern way to provide more body awareness and relaxation.

Does your work-out really need to be faster, most exhausting and harder? Slow your day down, allow your body and mind to relax – with Yoga for the Wii system.

Anja Rubik & Yoga

Anja Rubik is an ambitious yoga fan and practices this ancient philosophy to provide balance in her stressful everyday life as a model. She is convinced that it is the best way to control thought and breathing processes, and is enthusiastic about the new opportunity to practice yoga in the comfort of your own home while receiving feedback from a yoga guru. We're proud to have found Anja as the perfect advocate for our Wii game Yoga.

Yoga provides a completely new experience in the realm of fitness and lifestyle! JoWooD offers a tried and tested way of training the body and mind in the form of Yoga, all in the comfort of your living room! The combination of excellent graphics and the use of the Wii Balance Board offers a gaming experience never before seen!

Yoga encourages the Wii player to relax after a hard day!

Yoga supports the Wii Balance Board!

So You Think You Can (Virtually) Dance? Then Prove it During the Audition Online Video Dance Competition!

Redbana US Corp. is calling all Audition Online players to prove they have the real life dance skills to back up those they demonstrate virtually in the hit online PC rhythm game during the official Audition Video Dance Competition! Throughout July, users can create and submit 90 second videos showcasing their personal brand of creativity and uniqueness by dressing the part, demonstrating “mad skillz” and – most importantly – having fun!

Video submissions will be accepted until July 31st at midnight, with winners announced the following week. In addition to Redbana Cash that can be used to buy virtual items like clothes and accessories, the first place winner will receive an iPod Shuffle engraved with their in-game moniker.

Official contest rules and submission instructions can be found here: http://forums.redbana.com/showthread.php?t=5763

No Audition account? No problem. New users can sign up for a FREE account at http://audition.redbanaus.com

Summer Athletics 2009 for Nintendo Wii introduces the Balance Board Cup

Summer Athletics 2009’s Nintendo Wii version will support Wii Balance Board controls. The game is equipped with a unique Balance Board Cup.

Console athletes will need their stability on the Wii Balance Board to control their character in the contest’s five disciplines. These are high jump, triple jump, hammer throwing, high dive and archery. Players wiggle their hips around to spin the hammer and gather speed. Holding your breath and standing evenly balanced is key to hitting the mark in archery. If you center your weight right in the middle of the Wii Balance Board, you have only to adjust to cross winds to score full points.

Like all contests and challenges in Summer Athletics 2009, the Balance Board cup is available in three difficulty settings. "Easy" is recommended for players who have never played a sports game before, "Average" appeals to more experienced players and "Difficult" requires the skills of advanced players. It is possible to obtain a fourth difficulty setting called "Champion" after unlocking special achievements. “Champion” features the hardest AI competitors that will challenge even gaming veterans.

The battle for Gold Medals and personal bests sparks excitement and healthy competition in Summer Athletics 2009. Athletes from all over the world run, throw, jump and swim for victory. Millimeters and split seconds will decide the winners. When playing with friends and family, a living room becomes a stadium. It’s not only four players competing; in Summer Athletics 2009 they can chase records and beat their best times as a team, to eventually celebrate their big victory together.

The athletes compete in 28 summer time disciplines, including 100 meters sprint, high diving, javelin or the new skeet shooting event. In Berlin World Cup mode, a national team can go for ultimate glory in the World Championships in 15 track and field contests.

With a variety of game modes, format specific controls and up-to-date graphics, Summer Athletics 2009 will be challenging and fun to play at the same time.

Summer Athletics 2009 will be available this summer for Wii, Xbox 360 and PC in multiple territories. In the United States, the game will be published under the name World Championship Athletics by Conspiracy Entertainment.

Youda Sushi Chef time management game from Youdagames Download Free demo link

The successful Dutch casual games developer Youdagames and world’s biggest online games website Miniclip.com, have worked together to produce a beautiful and fun to play time management game: Youda Sushi Chef.

The game will be released on both the portals of Youdagames and Miniclip, tomorrow on the 9th of July. A week later, on July 15th , the game will be available on all other portals worldwide.

Following their highly successful free to play online game, Sushi-Go-Round, Miniclip has licensed the rights to Youdagames to develop the sequel to the game that will play both online and will also have a premium PC version available for download. Founder of Miniclip Robert Small was confident Youdagames would be the right partner to develop this game: “Having worked with Youdagames for over 6 years, we were confident that they could bring our Sushi game sequel to fruition online and on the PC. They have a track record of developing high quality, award winning titles.”

Youda Sushi Chef seems to come up to expectations. The game appears to be a beautifully designed and fun to play restaurant game, which will give the millions of casual gamers worldwide a great new challenge in time management land! The expectations of this game are high with both parties. “The game play is very addictive, so when Miniclip and Youdagames cooperate to distribute the game it will definitely have a huge impact on its success.”, according to Horst Streck, CEO at Youdagames.

Youda Sushi Chef
Youda Sushi Chef is a fun time management game. As in other restaurant games, your main goal is to keep your customers happy and serve them the right dishes in time to reach your daily target. Youda Sushi Chef outshines by beautiful design and a challenging game play. You really have to rely on your memory skills. Extra features like reservations and take away orders coming in constantly keep your adrenaline going.

You start your own sushi restaurant, build your sushi restaurant emporium and finally become the one and only Sushi Chef! Serving your customers all kinds of sushi, your goal is to reach a daily target. Every next level more sushi ingredients will be added and the more complex your sushi making will be. To reach your target in higher levels you can buy upgrades to serve customers faster, make combo’s or serve some take-away meals to earn extra money. To keep your customers happy you can decorate your restaurants, perform great knife tricks or serve some sake while your customers are waiting.

The game consists of six beautifully designed restaurants, a great choice of different sushi recipes, lots of bonuses, combo’s and upgrades.

Download Free demo here...

Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain for Nintendo DS

Aspyr Media and Big Blue Bubble have partnered to launch Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain for Nintendo DS. Based on the legendary book series by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain is a first-person fantasy role-playing game that takes players on an elaborate adventure through the Firetop Mountain Keep, the scene of the first entry in the renowned literary line.

With a highly optimized 3D engine, dynamic lighting and highly detailed, full-frame animations, Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain fully immerses players in the dank, eerie depths of each dungeon and passage.

“Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain is our most ambitious Nintendo DS project to date,” said Damir Slogar CEO of Big Blue Bubble Inc. “Driven by the vision of bringing next gen console gaming to the handheld platform, as well as our passion for role playing games, we spent the past few years working on a game that will showcase how this FPSRPG on Nintendo DS can and should look.”

Mr. Slogar added, “both Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson shared our vision and helped us recreate the world of Fighting Fantasy. The last step was finding a publisher with the same enthusiasm and Aspyr filled this role perfectly.”

“Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain might be the best looking game that we’ve ever seen on Nintendo DS and the opportunity to work with the likes of Ian Livingstone, Steve Jackson and the talented team at Big Blue Bubble was too good to pass up,” said Ted Staloch, Executive Vice President, Aspyr Media. “The series created by Ian and Steve turned fantasy books into unprecedented interactive experiences. The game that bears the franchise’s name will do the same for RPG gaming on a handheld.”

Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain follows a lone adventurer on his travels through the old Dwarven keep within Firetop Mountain. Now the residence of an evil warlock and hordes of foul creatures, the keep is a mysterious and dangerous place from which no one has returned in many years. As players guide the adventurer through the many passageways and dungeons, they develop the character’s abilities and attributes to suit their play style. Enemies will fall before the player’s brute strength with sword and axe, power of the arcane arts, nimble quickness or custom combinations of skills. A wealth of weaponry, armor, potions and enchantments are equipped through an intuitive drag-and-drop inventory system while helpful (or not-so-helpful) NPCs provide guidance, quests, trade goods and skill training.

The Fighting Fantasy book series launched in 1982 with the first title, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. Authors Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson created a revolutionary new idea for the fantasy genre: the reader would become the hero of his or her own fantasy adventure in a story that would be part book, part game. After each paragraph a decision must be made: which way to turn, whether to fight or flee, which mysterious character to approach, and what risks to take. Each choice sent the reader to a different page to discover the consequences of their choice, with each read-through ending either in disaster, or with the discovery of the ultimate goal. To date, the series has seen more than 70 titles published and more than 14 million copies sold worldwide.

Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain for Nintendo DS will be available this holiday season.

Cate West: The Vanishing Files video game on Nintendo DS and Wii

Daughter of Helen and Jon West, Cate is a budding writer and life-time resident of Arcadia City.
Since her father’s death 17 years ago, Cate has been haunted by dreams of the terrible event. She blames herself for not preventing his death even though there was no way she could have intervened.

Yuki Takeba has been Cate’s best friend with since they roomied at Arcadia college. Cate and Yuki are both fans of Japanese art and cooking, with Cate preferring the shopping for ingredients for Yuki to cook!

Over the years Cate’s intuition has gotten stronger and stronger. She’s not sure if this is related to her father’s death, or what to do with the “Gift”. She prefers not to think about these things, instead focusing on her writing.

Cate is currently preparing for the release of her first novel with her friend and editor Wesley Carr. The novel goes on sale in Europe on the 5th September.

Hobbies:
Writing, going to the Farmer's Market and collecting antique Japanese woodblock prints.

Cate West: The Vanishing Files
Release: 05.09.09
Genre: Seek-and-solve
Formats: Nintendo DS™, and Wii™
Pegi: 7+
Developer: Magellen Interactive/Destineer Games
RRP: Nintendo DS - £24.99, Wii - £24.99