Entertainment Electronics Blog

There’s still a lot of confusion over the details of Portal 2’s plot and how Aperture Science ended up in the condition it’s now in. Valve will be revealing some information soon that explains what happened between the first Portal and its sequel, which is set “further down the line” in the Half-Life universe.

“We’re actually going to release something that we’re not talking about yet that will give a little bit of the story of the interim time,” Valve writer Erik Wolpaw told Kotaku. “We’re doing that before release.” It’s currently unclear how much time has passed since the first game, which took place between the first two Half-Life games.

In Portal 2 players will again play as Chell, who was put in stasis following the events of the first game. (Valve changed the original’s ending post-release so she would be dragged away by something with a robotic voice.) A new character is being revealed at PAX East: The founder of Aperture Science, Cave Johnson. He’s voiced by J.K. Simmons, joining The Office and Extras co-creator and co-writer Stephen Merchant, who will voice the character of Wheatley.

Portal’s connection with the Half-Life games isn’t just the ramblings of message board posters — Valve admits it’s true — but don’t expect it to be especially pronounced. Wolpaw made a comparison with how The X-Files had mythology episodes throughout the series that dealt with an interconnected storyline in addition to standalone episodes that were completely unrelated to the rest.

“We tried to keep as light a touch about it as we did in Portal 1,” Wolpaw said. “Fans of Half-Life will notice some things, but if you haven’t played Half-Life they’ll just kind of pass right by you. You’re not going to see Gordon tromping through the facility.”

Portal 2 hits PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 on April 18.

With Total War: Shogun 2 coming out next week, Steam has the Total War Collection Pack for half price. For $64.99, you get Shogun 2 (a $50 game) upon its release in addition to four other Total War games: Empire, Medieval II, Napoleon, and Rome, the latter of which you can get on its own for just $2.50. Impulse has Battlefield: Bad Company 2 for just $9.99 and Direct2Drive is offering 20% off any game with a promo code.

Read on for the list of this week’s deals:
Amazon

•Buy one DS game, get one 50% off
•Xbox 360 Gearfest
•Xbox Live Gold 12-month subscription — $39.99 (from $59.99)
•DualShock 3 controller — $43.99 (from $54.99)

Direct2Drive

•Save 20% on all games — use promo code “hangover”

GamersGate

•Amnesia: The Dark Descent — $7.98 (from $19.95)
•Batman: Arkham Asylum – GotY Edition — $10.18 (from $29.95)
•Bulletstorm — $53.95 (from $59.95)
•Chains — $1.24 (from $4.95)
•Company of Heroes — $3.74 (from $14.95)
•Crash Time 2 — $3.74 (from $14.95)
•Crysis — $7.49 (from $29.95)
•Flatout — $1.49 (from $5.95)
•Flatout 2 — $2.49 (from $9.95)
•Flatout bundle — $9.96 (from $39.85)
•Flatout duo pack — $6.25 (from $24.99)
•Flatout Ultimate Carnage — $4.99 (from $19.95)
•Ghost Master — $1.50 (from $5.99)
•Jagged Alliance — $1.25 (from $4.99)
•Jagged Alliance 2 Gold — $4.99 (from $19.95)
•Mirror’s Edge — $4.99 (from $19.95)
•Mount & Blade — $5.99 (from $19.95)
•Obulis — $1.99 (from $7.95)
•Pacific Pack — $44.99 (from $99.94)
•Resident Evil 5 — $14.98 (from $29.95)
•Saints Row 2 — $6.78 (from $19.95)
•Thief: Deadly Shadows — $6.00 (from $14.99)
•Thief: The Dark Project — $5.00 (from $9.99)

GameStop

•World of Warcraft: Cataclysm — $29.99 (from $39.99)
•World of Warcraft Battlechest — $29.99 (from $39.99)
•Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 — $49.99 (from $59.99)

Goold Old Games

•40% off ‘Gems of Gaming’

Impulse

•Battlefield: Bad Company 2 — $9.99 (from $19.99)
•TimeShift — $9.99 (from $19.99)
•The Chosen: Well of Souls — $9.99 (from $19.99)
•Crazy Racers & Crazy Arena bundle — $14.99 (from $24.99)
•Academagia: The Making of Mages — $19.96 (from $24.95)
•Lost Planet 2 — $19.99 (from $39.99)

Steam

•Total War Collection Pack — $64.99 (from $129.95)
•Rome: Total War – Gold — $2.50 (from $9.99)
•Crazy Machines Everything Pack — $23.99 (from $39.99)
•Crasher — $5.10 (from $14.99)
•Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light — $7.49 (from $14.99)
•Wings of Prey — $14.99 (from $29.99)
•Majesty 2 — $4.00 (from $19.99)
•Majesty 2: Kingmaker — $2.00 (from $9.99)
•Majesty Complete — $34.99 (from $59.95)

A new Dungeons & Dragons game will be coming to downloadable formats early next year, Atari and Bedlam Games announced today.
Titled Dungeons & Dragons Daggerdale, it pits players against the forces of evil as they attempt to conquer the Dalelands. It looks to be an action multiplayer title, though it’s not clear how much in the way of RPG elements it will include.

This is the second D&D game to be announced this year, the other being the revival of Neverwinter. The latter is also a multiplayer title being developed in conjunction with Cryptic.

Daggerdale is currently being developed for XBLA, PSN and PC. Look for it in spring 2011.

The first batch of Enslaved DLC has been announced, and it will star Monkey and Trip’s companion Pigsy.

Billed as a playable side-story, Pigsy’s adventure will focus on “stealth and sharp-shooting.” It seems that he’s out to find the parts to create the perfect woman.

In addition to the quest, the DLC will add 3D support to the game. It will be compatible with both the side story and the main quest.

It will cost $10 (800 Microsoft Points). Look for it “later this year” on Xbox 360 and PlayStation Network.

Xbox 360 revenues have risen 33 percent since this time last year, hitting $1.2 billion in the first quarter, Microsoft announced today. Halo Reach represents a significant portion of the proceeds, raking in $350 million on its own (via Gamasutra).

The Xbox 360 helped the company’s Entertainment and Devices Division generate a $382 million profit the quarter, which represents a 46 percent increase from last year. The console was also cited as one of the key reasons Microsoft saw its revenue increase to $16.20 billion.

Microsoft expects further increases going forward, projecting a total year revenue increase of 20 percent and 30 percent year-over-year growth. Major releases will include Kinect and Windows Phone 7.

Kinect will be out next week.

Score one for physical media; downloadable racing game Outrun Online Arcade isn’t long for this world, according to a Eurogamer report.

Sega originally released the Ferrari-focused arcade racer on the Xbox Live Marketplace early last year, with a PlayStation Network version arriving exclusively in Europe shortly thereafter. Now the PSN edition of Outrun has apparently vanished from the European PlayStation Store.

An official statement from Sega follows: “Due to the expiry of the contract with Ferrari, OutRun Online Arcade will remain offline on PSN but will still be available on XBLA until Dec 2011.”

Microsoft pulled a similar disappearing act with several Midway XBLA titles after Warner Bros. Interactive bought the struggling Mortal Kombat publisher last year. While those games are still available to anyone who already purchased them, everyone else is pretty much out of luck.

At least Xbox 360 owners have a little advance warning this time around, though it seems strange that Sega’s deal with Ferrari resulted in the PSN version getting pulled more than a year before the XBLA release.

32-year-old Vincent thinks he’s got it made — a decent job, an equally decent number of friends, and Katherine, a pretty, talented girlfriend. But, of course, that wasn’t good enough for him, was it? He just had to go and have that affair with Catherine, a 22-year-old blonde with an odd hairstyle and an even more mysterious background.

Atlus revealed some more story details behind Catherine (the new action/adventure from the makers of Persona) this week, and they’re pretty…well, alluring. In addition to talking to (and/or fending off) both ladies in real life, Vincent will be asked to trade text messages with Katherine and Catherine throughout the game, even snapping cell-phone pictures and sending them to and fro — a gameplay aspect that Brett Favre ought to go nuts for (allegedly).

This isn’t all just idle flirting, though. In Vincent’s local neighborhood, there’s been a rash of sudden deaths, all apparently related to the nightmares they’ve been having. Vincent, along with his bar buddies, is starting to have those same recurring nightmares — climbing an endless tower, chased by hideous-looking demons, death awaiting him if he falls. The worst part of it all: Catherine, your freaky mistress, is involved somehow. As if trying to wriggle your way out of a long-term relationship wasn’t hard enough!

Catherine, the game, is due out this winter for the PS3 and Xbox 360 in Japan. No US release plans have been announced yet.

One of the most ambitious games of the late 1970s is getting new life on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC (via GameSpot).

The Star Raiders brand is being revived by former THQ subsidiary Incinerator Studios, which formerly focused on licensed titles such as Cars. It will include many elements from the original game, including the dogfights and navigation via the galactica chart.

Star Raiders began life on Atari’s 8-bit computers in 1979, and was later ported to various other platforms. It was one of the earliest “space combat simulators,” and helped to inspire Elite, which in turn inspired the seminal Wing Commander: Privateer and other titles.

The revival will be a full update with online multiplayer and customizable starships, including competitive team play and online co-op.

Look for it next year.

Japanese developer Cave, known for “bullet-hell” scrolling arcade shooters, announced today that the company will be releasing Guwange on Xbox Live Arcade worldwide on November 10th for 800 Microsoft points ($10).

Unlike most shooters, Guwange is set in historical Japan and features creatures and demons instead of spaceships and robots. The game was originally released in Japanese arcades back in 1999, but it proved to be the most popular response when producer Makoto Asada asked for players’ input in a survey last year.

Besides the original arcade version, two new modes will be included in this port. “Xbox 360 mode” will be customized for novices, setting the characters to auto-fire so that players can focus on evading enemy attacks. For the experts, there’s “Blue mode” which is an extra-hard version that was only shown to the public at a fan event in Tokyo.

While news of Guwange coming to XBLA was made public months ago, today’s announcement is the first indication that the game would be sold outside Japan.

Not only is the Xbox 360 S obviously physically smaller than the original Xbox 360 model, it also boasts a new combined graphics and processor chip that allows the redesigned system to run more silently, consume less power, and should also make it less prone to hardware malfunctions.

VentureBeat has a full break down of this new “Vejle” chip (named after a city in Denmark, for whatever reason), with its combination of CPU and GPU on the same chip being the key to its boost in performance. Rather than have a separate chip for each function (as all past Xbox 360 models had), the combined chip makes the systems cheaper to produce, as well as significantly less power hungry — the Xbox 360 S uses a whopping 60 percent less power compared to a launch 360 from 2005.

And the benefit isn’t just a small save in your power bill, as the smaller, quieter chip should also — in theory — have eliminated the dreaded “Red Ring of Death” malfunction once and for all. The cause of the RROD was that the graphics chip in earlier Xbox 360 models would eventually run so hot that they would warp the system board. But with the new combined chip, Microsoft says that even in hot conditions the new 360’s fan doesn’t have to top 55 percent of its capability.

The smaller chip (it uses 50 percent less space than the two chips needed in original 360 models) is also what allowed Microsoft to add in extra features like built-in 802.11N Wi-Fi.

VentureBeat’s full story has many more details on just what it took for Microsoft and IBM to actually manufacture the chip, along with a lot of diagrams of the new chip itself. So if you’re a tech-head interested in that kind of stuff, be sure to check it out.