News Snatch: Dynasty Warriors: Gundam Reborn, Penarium And Crimsonland

I was thinking over the weekend just how different this year is compared to last in terms of news. After five years and over 2,500 items published, I’m getting rather tired of doing this. But last year was fun, mainly because of Microsoft with their many Xbox One mistakes. Oh happy days, what I wouldn’t give for some big scandal to mock.

Sadly (or fortuitously for Microsoft) no such event has occurred which leaves me picking up the odds and sods of gaming news and packaging them in one easily digestible post.

So, Dynasty Warriors: Gundam Reborn is a new thing with a new trailer. “Experience the thrill of piloting Mobile Suits through famous scenes spanning multiple Gundam anime series in an action-packed thrill ride,” says the PR blurb and who am I to argue with that.

I’m really tired today which also makes me extremely grumpy and unlikely to tolerate fools, which brings me neatly on to a new, but hopefully short lived feature:

Xbox One Boss Promises New IP And Sequel Announcements At E3

Oh really? Tell me more! New games and sequels? Like, every other E3 ever then? Nice work, games journos!

Mass Effect 4 In The ‘Middle Stage’ Of Development

We know design work on the game began 18 months ago, triple A games usually have a 3-4 year development period which would make the release date, say  late 2015. That would make April 2014 is roughly the middle of the expected development cycle.

Anyone can work that out, but because someone tweeted it, it is news.

The Atari E.T. Cartidge “Mystery”

It was never a myth they were buried in the desert, or more precisely, a landfill site. The dumping was reported over a number of weeks in the Alamogordo Daily News of Alamogordo, New Mexico.

“There is no mystery whatsoever. People made it a mystery,” said James Heller of Nampa, Idaho, former employee of Atari and the chap responsible for shoving the games in the ground.

If Microsoft had found Noah’s Ark, or an evidence of extra-terrestrial life, or even the body of Lord Lucan, that is worth of a documentary and headlines.

“We dug up some things from a landfill site which we knew were there,” is not.

Onto real news then, and the evergreen Team 17 are to publish Penarium, which I keep on misreading as Perineum. Just confuse things even further the hero of the game is called Willy.

Willy is trapped in a crazy circus show where he needs to run, jump and avoid an array of killer death-traps while being cheered on by a sadistic crowd that’s out for blood; his blood. Survive the ever ongoing armada of destruction for as long as you can and crown yourself champion of the Penarium!

I have gazed in to my crystal ball and can foretell that Loading Human, a VR game for Oculus Rift, is going to be announced for PS4’s Project Morpheus tomorrow.

Ed Boon of Mortal Kombat fame has been tweeting what appears to be a countdown which will complete a day or two before E3. Rumours abound that a sequel to Injustice: Gods Among Us is in the works.

Stop the press! Exciting news for Xbox One owners, a forthcoming update will include a sound mixer and the option to help improve speech recognition. “The more voice samples we have to input into our algorithms, the better and more responsive Xbox One can be to our fans,” say Microsoft.

They also state this is only reason your voice will ever be recorded by Microsoft and the NSA is not holding a gun to the head of their pet bunny rabbit to make them say that.

Tony Hawk’s new game has been revealed and it is an endless runner for mobile devices. Tony Hawk’s Shred Session will be launching this summer.

Warframe on PS4 has been downloaded over 2 million times. I would estimate at least 1.5 million of those are me trying to download the latest version only for it to fail.

This is good news if indeed it is real, Tesco are listing XCOM Enemy Unknown – The Complete Edition for PlayStation Vita.

This is Crimsonland and it is coming to PlayStation 4 later this year.

A current employee at Kickstarter loving Harmonix posted a review of the company just two weeks ago on Glassdoor. This is part of the “cons” section:

Coupled with the extravagant spending during their fiscal peak led to criticism of how the company managed money, as it seemed that lavish parties and weekly catering were more important than basic development equipment.

That sounds fun doesn’t it? Spending loads of cash on parties and pizza! I’m sure they will have some left when they want to reboot a beloved classic from the past.

And Finally, this.