Already hotly rumoured, a conference call today according to IGN confirms Activision to develop the game for the Transformers movie.
Activision’s got some solid developers making Spider-Man and an endless stream of Tony Hawk titles.  Few publishers are better suited for this type of license…

Vaporware: Better Late Than Never comes from Wired, and recognizes the most delayed and missed technology products from 2005.  Infinium Phantom and Twilight Princess make the list, as do the MIA Starcraft Ghost and  the sequel to Team Fortress.
But could anything possible be #1 but…

Duke Nukem Forever, which has been in development since 1997.  DN 3D was the first game  I ever played on a LAN, and that was a long, long time ago…

Rockstar is pretty much to the video game industry what the South is to hip hop. They may not be as ‘abstract’ as everyone else, but they add their own unique twists to tried and true gaming conventions that, other  developers will be all too happy to try to emulate.  (See Driv3er, True Crime, and Narc) So with that in mind, lets look at 2 of their most recent games.

The warriors is based upon the cult classic 1979 film.  This is probably one of the most referenced films in hip hop next to Scarface.  Anyone who has seen the film can tell that that could make a game in and of itself, but Rockstar manages to add in new content to flesh out the backstory.  You’ll learn how the warriors spent the summer leading up to the big meeting, get up close and personal with the gangs seen only briefly in the film, and even learned how the gang got together.  The game starts at the fateful night where gang leader and visionary Cyrus is gunned down, but in a Quentin Taratino-esque twist, we flashback to 3 months before the meeting, which makes up 2/3rds of the game.  Rockstar attempts to reinvent the brawler for a new generation (an act barely achieved successfully by fighting force and Gekkido on the PS1) by combining elements of their other titles such as GTA and Manhunt, and they succeed.   The environments are large and open with hidden objectives to discover, and some stealth elements and minigames help move this game away from the same ol same ol brawler territory.  Also to note is the team dynamic, in which you can use the right analog stick to issue commands to your AI controlled teammates.  Although it takes some time to get used to, this isn’t complicated at all, and you can do anything from having them wreck the place to watching your back.  The game also does a fine job of capturing the look and feel of the movie throughout the game, as much of the last third of the game is directly out of the movie.  Several unlockables (including a double dragon-esque arcade game) help round this out and keep players coming back for more.

As the latest entry in Rockstar’s franchise, Grand Theft Auto:  Liberty city stories doesn’t do anything that hasn’t been done in the past three entries, almost being a step backwards, as many of the features and enhancements from Vice City and San Andreas have been left out.  Your protagonist can’t swim, targeting is as cumbersome as ever, and many of the missions range from just plain bland to outright frustrating.  However, as a PSP game, GTA LCS is one of the first real ‘must buy’ games for the system.  It contains everything that GTA is known for (a free open world, a dirty sense of humor, a somewhat compelling plot, and a vast selection of weapons and vehicles to utilize in order to wreak havoc on civilians), and it brings every square foot of liberty city to PSP.  Also, this is the first version to feature wireless multiplayer.  Although it’s ad-hoc only, it’s still nice to finally have this in a game without having to rely on a PC hack.  Also interesting to note is that a save game exploit can be used to load homebrew games for users stuck with an upgraded PSP.

Brett Ratner’s bid to doom the franchise!
Ok, maybe not. Take away what I know about the movie from spy reports and this actually looks good. Not as killer as that first X2 teaser with Holst’s “Mars” playing over the footage of the army invading the masion all with Magneto’s voice-over… but its still decent. Nerd note: Vinnie Jones as Juggernaut in Magneto’s army doesn’t make sense since he isn’t a mutant. But if we got organic webshooters, we’ll get this and no-one will probably care too much.
The Xverse has some nice caps of the trailer if you can’t watch it for whatever reason. I already made myself a new desktop celebrating the infamous Magneto quote from the X-Men Arcade game: Welcome To Die!

New Game Informer magazine (Splinter Cell cover) has a 6 page story about the X3 game from Activision. 3 playable characters: Wolverine (obviously), Iceman (cool!), and Nightcrawler (huh?).
The game itself bridges the gap between 2 and 3, and will feature missions returning to Alkali lake to salvage bits from Stryker’s Cerebro to fix the one damaged during the assault on the mansion. Wolvie also meets up with Deathstryke who’s survived, and will go to Japan (Silver Samurai?). His levels will be brawlers, taking on many enemies and taking cover only long enough to heal before pounding through more enemies.
Iceman gets very fast paced levels as he’ll race around using that ice surfing trick I loved so much from the old Spiderman show. Looks like his levels will use some Sonic the Hedgehog type stuff. one of the screen shots show him using an ice blast against a fire engulfing a nuclear plant (likely Pyro’s handywork).
Nightcrawler’s levels will supposedly set his story out away from the action of X3, hopefully explaining away why he’s not in the movie. He gets *bamf* around people, kicking them in the back and also sneak around.

Movie games are SO hit and miss these days, which is better than they used to be, which was all miss. Though I know I should prepare for another ass game linked to what may very well be an ass movie, x2 was too kind to me to just abandon it now. I still saw Batman Forever after all, but learned my lesson by Batman & Robin.

Latino Review has handed down a Five Star Rating to the Halo Movie Script!
This comes directly from a critic who has not played the games, but did enough research on the back story to see if the movie fits. Obviously, it looks like we’re in for a fast paced Covenant War unlike anything we’ve ever seen in film or games if this review is to be beleived.

I’ll admit that even though I like the Halo story, its second to the action. Garland (28 Days Later) was hand picked for this project because the Covenant are religious radicals not far off in behavior from the rage zombies. And without having to factor in stuff like player difficulty and whether the processor can handle “X” many troops on screen at once, the Halo flick will likely amp up every major event from the first game. We’re even going to be given battle scene with an entire Spartan army (I’m sure we’ll all be looking for Spartan 458)! And thats the first scene in the movie!
Obviously, even though it’ll be taking the game’s story and the review only covers the first act, spoilers follow so read at your own risk.

Reports coming out of Botcon say there is a Transformers game in development to go with the movie, which is due July 4, 2007. Since this is well past the launch of the 360, PS3, or Rev, its safe to assume we’re looking at a next-gen title.
Hasbro isn’t ready to announce who is working on it, only that they are working on it. The bad news is that it won’t be done by melbourne house, who did an excellent job with Transformers on PS2 last May. The good news is, its unlikely we’ll get a repeat of the abomination
Transformers Tatakai, which only came on in Japan.
And for the un-initiated, the new movie IS based on the original Generation One characters. But if you dodged Transformers on PS2 because it features the Armada cast, you’re missing a hell of a shooter.

One of the all time greats of the survival horror genre. No evil corporation here, just strict psychological terror. The good thing about the plot is that it leaves so much to the gamer, spawning dozens of fan sites and plot analyses on gamefaqs.com. Complete with one of the most f’ed up plot twists of all time, ths game remains a benchmark for the genre along with Eternal Darkness and Resident Evil 4.

Special thanks to Ephrum from Xbox Live and Geezer Gamers for these glitch videos. He’s got more on the way, but any serious or amatuer Halo 2 players looking to expand into some of the crazier exploration methods in multiplayer maps (and wondering how friends and enemies end up in odd places) should watch these.