Dunno. I believe all jobs demand a certain degree of knowledge and compromise, and I want to give these guys credit and respect for what they do without falling in the commonplace "lol, stoopid-ass analysts". I mean, they have those jobs for a reason, and I'm pretty sure forecasting how an entire industry will behave in this volatile economic climate must be a daunting task.

But some of the conclusions they arrive to, they just defy logic/common sense.

England, mario and luigi set up shops next to each other.

Notice how Luigi's is a run down dump, closed for business

fCodemasters has announced Bodycount, a new game under the creative direction of Stuart Black, best known for the Criterion Studios shooter Black -- and which draws inspiration from J.J. Abrams and Lady Gaga.

Though Black has been at Codemasters for "two or three years now," he says, he "actually started on a different project, another original IP that's kind of been on the back burner... We started [production] work on Bodycount about nine months ago."

Black describes the game as a "techno-thriller" first person shooter with a focus on destructible environments.

Though the publisher is best known for its popular racing games like DIRT and GRID, it has struggled to move into other genres -- primarily with titles developed by external studios, such as Spark Unlimited's critically unappreciated Turning Point: Fall of Liberty. Black says that Bodycount is the first project in a reboot for the publisher's non-racing business.

"We were already staffing up," says Black. "We were working on a different project, and we were staffing up for that." The team, which is based in Guildford, England -- alongside other major UK studios like Criterion, Media Molecule, and Lionhead -- recruited "a lot of our bandmates, if you like, from our time working on Black," says Black.

The reason the team shifted priorities from its initial project to Bodycount, says Black, is that "we had this itch about this type of shooter we wanted to play, that we just couldn't buy. Our big headline is that we want to put the fun back into shooting -- we want this game to be outrageous fun with a gun." The game will ship for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in the first quarter of 2011. It uses the company's own proprietary engine, the EGO Game Technology Platform, and will deliver co-op and competitive multiplayer alongside its main story mode.

He describes the game team, which is focused on a "21st century" creative focus, as having "a lot of fresh new ideas and fresh blood coming in... A big thing is that we don't want to repeat ourselves. If you do something innovative and new and that's taking a step into the unknown."

"This is hyperbole but we really mean it," says Black, who feels that the current crop of AAA shooters -- while excellent titles -- are backwards-looking, creatively. He cites Lady Gaga's performance at the Glastonbury music festival as revelatory, and says that J.J. Abrams' reboot of the Star Trek movie franchise last year was also foundational to the direction he wants to take the franchise -- both are cited in terms of their approach and attitude, says Black.

bugsonglass said:

i read through the EG review of yakuza 3 very quickly and i didn't find any info on the dialogue localisation/subtitles.  at one point they were saying there was going to be an option to keep the japanese soundtrack and have subtitles rather than listen to the dubbed dialogue.  did they do that in the end?

Buy it and tell us.

Agnates said:

I thought one particular PoP maneuver with water was clever and I'm hopeful the rest of the game follows suit. Much more promising than the screeshots implied for sure. Now show us the Wii version in motion Ubi :-)

Which move?

I get the idea that the water makes pillars or walls. Essentially they are like translucent pillars or walls and when you press a button they become solid.

Q&A: Shooter specialist Stuart Black shares details on "glossy techno-thriller" shooter, due out in Q1 2011; says Black 2 "bit the dust" at EA.

In 2008, EA Games president Frank Gibeau admitted Electronic Arts was pondering a sequel to Black, its gun-centric, 2006 shooter for the PlayStation 2 and original Xbox. While nothing concrete has surfaced about the proposed project, one of the game's creators has unveiled an all-new shooter that aims to deliver the same sort of highly destructible environments and realistic gunplay.

Bodycount will let players shoot away cover like concrete walls.

The designer in question is Stuart Black, who is now leading a team at Codemasters' studio in the British city of Guildford. As revealed by a magazine leak yesterday, the game is Bodycount, and is in development for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Due out in the first quarter of 2011, it is one of the first new internally developed intellectual properties from the British publisher in years.

"When I joined Codemasters, one of the big appeals for me was how serious Codemasters were about original IP," Black told GameSpot. "But I wasn't particularly interested in making another shooter, right. I wasn't really ready to go dipping my toes into those waters again….But, I'm a great FPS fan myself, right, I love playing FPSs and there was just this itch."

Based on the same proprietary EGO engine as the Dirt racing games and Operation Flashpoint, Bodycount will be a "glossy techno-thriller," according to Black. According to Codemasters, the game will see players as a commando who kills foes known only as "targets" for a shadowy organization called simply "the Network." Though he wouldn't go into explicit detail, Black likened the game's story to that of the television series FlashForward, in which the world's entire population has a two-minute blackout during which they see their lives six months into the future.

"It's not a military game, it's not a future game, it's not a game of the past, it's set now, in the present day, but it has a strong technological thread," he told GameSpot. "You start in the present, and you take one step into the future during the course of the game. Then, you make your choice on whether you think that's a good or a bad thing."

Unlike Black, Bodycount will have a variety of multiplayer modes, including co-op. However, the game's campaign will remain single-player. Black explained the decision. saying, "As we got into the story more and we got into our characters more, we suddenly realized that from an emotional point of view and the emotional connection we want the player to have, particularly with that lead character, we can't have another player in there with them. "

However, just because the multiplayer and co-op modes are separated from the main story, doesn't mean that the three aren't interconnected. Said Black, "We also realized that because our single-player campaign is so focused on this character that we actually have an opportunity, with our co-op and our multiplayer modes, to look at more of the back story of the world that the player's story fits into."

Codemasters Guilford is also trying to fashion realistic guns like the 2006 game Black.

When asked if the multiplayer and co-op modes would be a prequel like the multiplayer modes in BioShock 2, Black said, "It'll be both a prequel and a sequel, right, because we'll be trying to advance before and then after the player was in that part of the world."

He also said that while the multiplayer emphasis will be on team deathmatch, the game will have something akin to Gears of War 2's horde mode. The designer overseeing Bodycount's multiplayer development was in charge of the multiplayer aspect of Burnout Paradise at Criterion Games, where Black also worked.

Right now, Bodycount's maximum number of players is 12, a number limited by the sheer amount of destructible elements in the game's world. Black believes it will even outdo recent destructible-environment shooters like Battlefield: Bad Company 2 in what he called "intimate" levels of destruction.

As for Black 2, the game designer said it had been in development shortly after the original game's release, but had been shelved when he left EA. "Not so long ago people were saying, 'Gee, is there ever going to be a sequel?' I was kind of thinking, 'No, I don't think there is,'" he said. "I don't know what they're doing now. I certainly did some preliminary pre-production work on Black 2, once we finished Black, the first three or four months. I moved on quite quickly after that."

He continued, "A lot of the guys on the team I'm working with here now carried on with that and did a lot of pre-production for about a year or so on Black [2], before that kind of bit the dust. So, I don't really have personal knowledge about how that all played out. But there seemed to be overall a kind of general lack of direction. I'd be surprised if they managed that again."

My son has decided its' time to test out the durability of the DSi.  He decided it was dirty and it needed to be washed in the sink. . .

Stay tuned for the results if it will ever work again.

robio said:

My son has decided its' time to test out the durability of the DSi.  He decided it was dirty and it needed to be washed in the sink. . .

Stay tuned for the results if it will ever work again.

Ouch.

My dad ran his cell phone through the washer once (he forgot that it was in his pants pocket). He just took it apart, and let it dry out for a day. It worked fine afterward.

phantom_leo said:

robio said:

My son has decided its' time to test out the durability of the DSi.  He decided it was dirty and it needed to be washed in the sink. . .

Stay tuned for the results if it will ever work again.

The DSi feels like the flimsiest Nintendo portable ever --BUT-- I would honestly be very surprised IF you let it dry out properly if it DID NOT work. Nintendo products can normally take a beating.

I'm sure you've seen the GameBoy that was nearly destroyed in a war and still works, right? It's proudly on display in the Nintendo Store in NYC.

Yes and I saw the gulf war gameboy in the flesh back in December. I have pics.