By Alex Villafania, hackenslash Reporter
INQUIRER.net

PHILIPPINE-BASED game development firm Pixelstream gave a sneak peek into the next stages of development of an experimental game and a new game that could be released commercially.

The company also showed the new look of its proprietary Pixelstream Graphics Engine, which was ported to the Xbox 360 through the Microsoft XNA development kit.

A demo of the Pixelstream Graphics Engine was run on the Xbox 360 with new features being added, particularly a cel-shading texture scheme that can be toggled on and off.

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STORM’S back!

Nope not Halle Berry, but the one, true Ororo Munroe in the comic book.

Here’s the preview that Marvel sent us:

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HERE’S a preview of Sonic the Hedgehog #176 from our friends at Archie Comics:

“Cracking the Empire”: The greatest heroes of Mobius have been captured, their homes destroyed and Sonic defeated… but you can’t keep a good hedgehog down!

With only Tails, Knuckles and Amy Rose at his side, can Sonic manage to recover in time and save his friends and family — or has Dr. Robotnik truly won the day?

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #176
Script: IAN FLYNN
Art: TRACY YARDLEY
Cover: SPAZ

By Alex Villafania, hackenslash Reporter
INQUIRER.net

ON WEDNESDAY, ABS-CBN Multimedia treated a few gaming journalists to a preview of War Rock, their new online first-person shooter game created by Korean firm Dream Execution Technology.

The event took place at the popular gaming cafe Station 168 in Tomas Morato, Quezon City. With War Rock Philippines still in closed beta stage, what ABS-CBN Multimedia showcased was the original Korean version, meaning all of the text was in Korean. Luckily the game marshals already knew how to tweak the game so 16 players teamed up to battle each other.

It is said that the game plays much like Counter-Strike, which it does since it has all the elements of CS: two groups teaming up to kill each other, either as a counter-terrorist or terrorist. But at first glance, War Rock closely resembles the more popular Battlefield series. As such, the main goal is to either capture the flags of enemy territories or wipe out foes.

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WITH the oversaturation of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) in the market today, it has become a challenge for most companies to establish a niche in an industry where its consumers are quick to change games when an MMO no longer has the initial innovation and creativity that attracted them in the first place.

No longer content with the usual hack-and-slash, rinse-and-repeat formula, most gamers are constantly in search of that one game that caters to their oftimes demanding prerequisites: an ambiguously enjoyable plot, gameplay that differentiates itself somehow from the monotony of the level grind, a certain amount of customization for character individualization, unique player versus player/clan versus clan features, and a host of interesting in-game challenges, among others.

In terms of originality, Granado Espada, perhaps, comes closer out of all the other games out right now in the running for the title. While most MMOs have pseudo-fantasy and magical settings, Granado Espada is instead a historical RPG. Characters wear clothes reminiscent of a mock Elizabethan/Victorian turned baroque age, with perhaps more bare skin than would have been approved of in that prudish era.

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