That’s right the popular 1 vs. 100 on XBL will start handing out prizes to the mob next week.  Starting July 10th “skill based prizes” will be given out for the mob, but the game will remain in the Beta stage.  No date has been given as to when the popular game will be no longer in the Beta stage, but they will start giving out prizes next weekend so that is a step in the right direction.  I have played the game on occasion and have fared pretty good against other competitors, but lets see how the questions will change now that prizes are on the line.

A soundboard like no other;

A soundboard… of Evil

The team over at TechPad Productions who specialize in producing applications and games for the mobile market, are getting ready to release iMEvil.  iMEvil is a fully functioning Soundboard featuring the voice talent of David Sobolo. Mr Sobolo has been the video game voice of evil for over 40 characters including the Arbiter from Halo Wars and Lt. Vasquez from Call of Duty 4. He is also going to be one of the voice actors in Diablo III

They are putting together 32 different evil-induced phrases into what almost looks like an iPhone skin; you know, those things you can do with Jailbroken/unlocked iPhones…  (beware 3.1)

Check out this video from one of the beta testers having an inner battle with demons.

It is “coming soon” for $1.99, check it out if you want to have some fun with prank calls (or World of Warcraft) I take that back… please use this product responsibly.

HOST:  Platform Nation (Steve519)
PLATFORM:  Xbox 360
GAME:  Halo 3
WHEN:  July 5th (Sunday)
TIME:  5 p.m. PST

After the hugely successful gaming night that took place this past Monday, P*N will be hosting another gaming night and you, the community, has decided what will be playing.  You voted in our forums, right here.

HOST: Platform Nation
PLATFORM: PlayStation 3
GAME: Up For Vote
WHEN: July 8th (Wednesday)
TIME: 5 p.m. PST

Now our PlayStation Gaming Night is also up for vote and we need to know what game you want to play. Click the “Up For Vote” link above and cast your vote now on what you would like to play with the Platform Nation community.

In addition to just all around fun gaming with our community, Platform Nation will also feature live streams of our game nights right here on our front page. Just check back to our front page during the event to see the LIVE link to our video stream.

Mercs 2 is fun. Lots of fun. It wasn’t the most hyped game, it wasn’t the most loved game and it doesn’t hold up very well compared to any big title. It’s the sequel to the hit Mercenaries Playground of Destruction, which was more fun than a fun-man wearing a fun hat on FUNday. Now, Mercs 2 made no impact in any genre or anything, if anything it just used up disc space. But past it’s bugs, it’s lack of any care-able story or any depth, it’s a fun little romp. More than a fun little romp, an absolute blast… for around a couple of hours.

Mercs 2 tells the tale of a mercenary, who you play  as (you can select any of the three available)  who does a job for a top politician but doesn’t get pay.  This whole event sparks a trail of revenge, but it never connects to the player. I honestly didn’t care one bit about the story and I skipped most of the cut scenes (which just told us the names and what the bad people have done), it never shows any emotion and without that there’s no real incentive to care. The only reason I got through most of the actual story is thanks to a few of my mercenaries wisecracking remarks.

Without a compelling story, you’re left to wonder what to care about. Who to care about to be exact. The remarks made by your character are enjoyable, and they spice up the action nicely. Unfortunately there’s no real attachment to any of the mercenaries and the story is so weak that it never even makes you think twice about why you’re shooting people in the face. Running around clumsily with your gun and shooting people in the face kinda of has an empty feeling to it. You might think I’m getting a bit sentimental but the fun factor is reduced, without any motive or emotion.

Mercs 2 is set in Venezuela, of all places, and it goes from lush forests to green seas to drab docks. The environment is generally sorted into bits, generic, and all I’m saying is it would’ve been nice to just have it spread out. I know it’s easier to recognize that you’re going to the ‘Corporation’ to get a job, if you’re in a huge city, or the ‘Pirates’ if you’re at the docks… but still, have a little middle ground? Other than that, the game generally holds well in terms of presentation, although there’s a little grain effect and the character models never blink. (They must just have glass eyes)

There’s a lot of fun to be had in Mercs 2. You can grapple on to helicopters, hijack cars, drive a truck into a stronghold and detonate the charges you placed earlier or blow stuff up. It’s all fun, fun, fun stuff until you realize that everything is dotted with quicktime events. You know what quick time events are right? PRESS X TO NOT DIE, NOW PRESS SQUARE TO NOT DIE, TAP TRIANGL… yeah you get the picture. Well, they’re annoying and I’m sick of having to press buttons in an order, just to climb into a tank and blow things up. Quicktime events is just pushing buttons, this is 2009 not 1989!

In Mercs 2, you shoot people in the face, then go to some dude and ask for a job, then shoot more people in the face. If shooting people in the face isn’t getting the job done, you can always order a nuke from the nearby shop. All you do is shine some laser pen on the dude/ostrich/thing you wanna explode and the sky rains down fire. It can be largely enjoyable to watch an entire city crumble from exploding, but it can also be a lot of fun shooting people in the face. Although, the controls are loose and some weapons are quite overpowered.

So what would I call Mercs 2? A full fun experience? Not quite, there a few bugs and issues which spoil a largely enjoyable experience, and there’s also the lack of motivation. The story is virtually not there, and I’m quite certain that each character’s ‘personality’ is really just a gimmick. Even the entertaining catchphrases that each of them spout, they all seem kind of watered down. So what I would call Mercs 2 is… well it’s short-lived… very fun… I would call it rental title of 2008. Which is strange because I just so happened to actually buy the rental title of the year. Oh how awesome I am!

This is Batman as we know him best from the comic books.  Sure there’s a nod to the recent movies but the costume has all the hallmarks of the classic design.  Will it live up to the brilliant graphic novel of the same name?  Probably not.

What marks this out as different is that it is not a movie tie in. Too often we see games rushed out to match the release of a film but that is not the case here. Hopefully this will be the way forward and kudos to Warner Bros. for allowing one of their most coveted licenses to be used outside of the usual cycle.

What is slightly disappointing is that Sony has yet again missed a trick.  The PlayStation has a nice exclusive for a change. That’s right folks you get to play as the Joker on the PlayStation version, which is a pretty cool exclusive by anyone’s standards.  How nice it would have been to have had that trailer up on the PSN in Europe this week.   Now naturally Sony has got this right in the States.  You guys had the trailers up around the time of E3 and the Joker trailer is there and available to view.  Of course many of us have multiple accounts on our PS3’s enabling us to download the free content from the other regions but it is pretty short sighted of Sony Europe to not have included the Joker video.  Hell, it’s a reason to shout about having  a PS3 for a change.

Arkham Asylum looks suitably dark, and the game-play looks as though it could be a nice mix of brutal take downs and stealthier sections all viewed from an over the shoulder perspective.  Rocksteady has sensibly stuck to a comic book style Joker rather than attempt a Heath Ledger style make over and he looks suitably maniacal.

This does look like a release to get excited about.  The first decent Batman game for… well ever actually.  Fingers crossed.

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, or GLAAD, is soon going to try to make these virtual worlds a safe place for gays and lesbians to play in. GLAAD is going to work with gaming companies to make policies that protect gays and lesbians without removing the terms from the dictionary. They want to work with gamers, journalists and others to try and make the virtual world a place where gays and lesbians can relax without hearing hate from random douche bags. They will also have a panel on homophobia with representatives from several gaming companies and LGBT gamers. The entire press release can be found here.

As of this week Final Fantasy fans will finally be able to preorder the next chapter of the series for the Playstation 3 or the Xbox 360 .  Gamestop has set the release date for Final Fantasy XIII as 6/21/2010 so if you’ve been waiting to preorder this one, go scrounge up $5 and head to your local Gamestop to reserve a copy!

Set during the time of the Three Kingdoms period, Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires puts you in the role of one of many different characters. Your goal is to eventually take over all of China. This can be done in one of two ways. The first is as an officer to a ruler. In this mode you follow his orders and basically do what he says. The other mode is ruler mode. In this mode you are the ruler and you must manage you land. It is up to you to take over other territories and recruit officers to work for you.

Empires does come with a create-a character mode which gives you some limited options. Some of which are the abilities to change the gender, face, height and weight, and the clothes. In the end, I felt the characters I could create were much more interesting than the ones given to you in the game.

In both modes the game progresses in one month segments. Every month you are allowed to partake in one battle. This battle could be a mission given to you by your ruler, or it could be a mercenary mission. Mercenary missions usually involve helping a group of settlements defend themselves against a group of enemies. As you complete more mercenary missions, your character will garner stat bonuses as well as the game’s currency. During a month you are also allowed to purchase things, and if you are a ruler you can work with the officers under your rule. I believe that this system works well, once I figured it out.

And figuring things out is where my biggest complaint in this game lies. Its tutorial is a little bit lacking. In this day and age of video game I expect certain things from my games. Such as an optional tutorial that leads me, by hand, through the game as I play. Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires does not offer this. I basically learned how to play the game through trial and error. There is a short tutorial that you can read through, but I didn’t find it until about 2 hours into the game and by that time I had figured out most of what was going on. The first hour was extremely frustrating and I had no idea what I was doing. But in the games defense once I figured it out I began to enjoy the game…. somewhat.

Another feature in Empires is the use of light RPG elements. As you progress through the game you receive experience points which allow you to level up your character. This leveling system is also supplemented by an upgrading system. In this system you can spend the money you earn on weapon upgrades, health upgrades, as well as horses. With the upgrades you can customize your character to better suite you as a player. A drawback to this system is, depending on what territories you are in you don’t have access to all the stores.

At its heart Dynasty Warriors has always been a bit of a button masher. Having three basic attacks – Regular attack (the most used attack), strong attack, and your magic attack – I often found that the only attack I would use was the regular attack and the magic attack when it was charged up. At times I felt extremely bad assed when I was able to plough through hundreds of enemies at once. The only problem I had was when there were multiple enemies on the screen I would often have trouble finding my character in the mass of people. At times like that I found it very frustrating because I had no idea what I was doing.

Graphically the game doesn’t come even close to breaking any expectations. It has some really weird pop-out. The game has grass that can be seen from a distance but once you get close it seems to disappear. The draw distance in the game is pretty good. You can see as far as you need to though this could be attributed to the lack of detail in the level design. There isn’t too much variation in the levels and most of the buildings all look the same.

My biggest complaint to the game is the lack of variety when it comes to the battle modes. There are basically three types. The first is messenger mode. You are given two minutes to traverse the map and deliver a message to a fellow officer. This sounds easy enough, but my first time through I was too slow and I wasn’t able to afford a horse, so I failed every one of those missions which became extremely frustrating. The other type is escort mode. This mode is very similar to the messenger mode. You have to escort a fellow officer through the battlefield and make sure he survives the trek. The third and most common mode is the attack and defend mode. In this mode you have to make one of your bases survives and you are able to kill the opposing officer. In most of the battles you are given an optional target objective. This objective could be killing a certain officer in a certain time limit or just killing other officers. After about 6 hours of these modes became a little boring, and doing the same thing over and over again drove me to reduce my playing time quite drastically.

Diehard fans of this series will really enjoy this game and get a lot out of it, as they have all of the previous Dynasty Warrior games. You could probably spend hundreds of hours leveling characters and going through all the different historical scenarios it offers. With great replay value, Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires offers a great value for the $40 dollar cost.

Score: C

Publisher: Koei

Systems Available on: PS3 and 360

While the pressure is on Sony, we probably will not see a price drop until this holiday season at the earliest. This will no doubt give Sony a boost in sales and increase the install base, but will it be enough?

Currently the cheapest PlayStation 3 on the market is $399.99. Even if Sony takes the knife to the price and cuts it down to $349.99, it is still the most expensive console on the market by $100. Personally, I don’t believe that this will satisfy Activision in the long run. Sure, a few hundred thousand more consoles will be sold this holiday, but what happens after Christmas? The sales numbers will return to the pre-price cut levels and everyone will start complaining again. The circle of life continues!

Meanwhile, everyone is waiting for the new slim version of the PlayStation 3 to be announced. We can assume that the slim version will come out at the same price as the current SKU’s. Then, hopefully, the price of the 80GB and 160GB models will come down as they clear out the retail channel. Rumors like this only hurt them in the long run, but only Sony can stop the leaks in their company.

Of course, this is all speculation. Sony hasn’t announced anything regarding the PS3 Slim or a price cut. What they have done is announce some very exciting games coming to the console this holiday and in 2010. For most people, the barrier of entry isn’t so much the price as it is the existence of Sony’s AAA titles at retail. Games like MGS4 and GTAIV can only take the console so far. Once God of War 3 and The Last Guardian hit, I believe console sales will follow.

Instead of Activision and Tecmo Koei complaining about the price of the console, they should be concentrating on bringing great games to market. Even with the recession going on, people still want to play games. That’s not going to change, whether the console is $400 or $350.

Many characters entered the ring when you, the Platform Nation readers, voted on who Sony’s mascot should be.  Two favorites soon emerged in your eyes and they could not be more different.  Kratos; the god killing, family slaying, goatee having god of war and Sackboy/girl; the absolutely adorable, level creating, bubble collecting star of Little Big Planet.  These polar opposites battled back and forth, quickly leaving behind the likes of Ratchet, Nathan Drake, Cloud Strife and others.  Now, time to reveal the winner! Scroll down to see who you chose.
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P*N, you have decided on Kratos Sackboy!  The two characters ended in a tie!  The Kratos Sackboy harnesses Kratos’ rage and goatee while somehow becoming even cuter than a regular Sackboy.  Sony has two popular characters that can excite two different types of gamers and should use both to their full potential.  P*N’s official Sony mascot is the Kratos Sackboy.  Platform Nation readers, keep on the lookout for more opportunities to vote and decide!