Guitar Hero 5 and Band Hero: December DLC

Activision is pulling out a majority of the stops for the last month of 2009, adding a highly varied assortment of tracks to Guitar Hero 5 and Band Hero throughout the next 31 days. Included are track packs from OneRepublic and The Fall of Troy, an "Indie Rock" pack which includes songs from Spoon, Pavement and Nada Surf, a "New Years Rock" pack which features music from Taylor Swift, Maroon 5 and No Doubt, and finally, a totally free song which will arrive shortly before the holidays: Steve Ouimette's version of "Hark The Herald Angels Sing."

These songs follow the franchise's usual DLC pricing structure: Each single track will cost 160 ($2, 200 Wii Points), while each track pack will cost 440 ($5.50, 550 Wii Points). For a full list of song titles and release dates, just click past the break.

Continue reading Guitar Hero 5 and Band Hero: December DLC

Guitar Hero 5 and Band Hero: December DLC originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Santa Claus is coming to PlayStation Home

Santa has added a layover in PlayStation Home to an already-packed holiday itinerary. On December 10, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe is opening up a new PlayStation Home space that allows you to see Santa's workshop through the unique Home filter -- by which we mean it's now kind of eerie. The new Winter Wonderland space will allow you to interact with a vaguely Shatner-esque Santa Claus and elves like Robin Williams here, as you help the crew get all its preparations for Christmas done. Which means minigames!

There will be presents, of course, and a Photo Elf who will take festively decorated pictures of your Home avatar. You know, so you can always remember the time you saved Christmas.

Santa Claus is coming to PlayStation Home originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Master Arica Harbor with these Bad Company 2 beta tips

If you find yourself coming up short in your quest for victory in the PS3-exclusive multiplayer beta for Bad Company 2, the development team at DICE has a few pointers to help reduce the gap between your win and loss statistics. Bad Company 2 level designer Inge Jøran "Pirelli" Holberg posted a laundry list of tips for attackers and defenders for the beta's Arica Harbor map.

With the map's design in mind, Holberg's tips feature a slew of ideas on how you can destroy specific areas of the map to redirect adversary foot traffic -- right into the sights of your favorite firearm. Our tips? Keep shooting people on the other team and you're bound to win eventually. We're professionals here, folks.

Master Arica Harbor with these Bad Company 2 beta tips originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 29 Nov 2009 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Why 'Lords of Shadow' wasn't 'Castlevania: Lords of Shadow' at first

Being Dave Cox, head of European development for Konami, can't be an easy job. For one, he's not Hideo Kojima, so he's already got that going against him. Worse yet, he's had to tow the company line and let his upcoming Castlevania: Lords of Shadow languish out of the spotlight while Castlevania Judgment got all the attention. It seems Konami didn't even have the confidence to allow Lords of Shadow the Castlevania license -- nor did fans. "It was quite a radical departure from what had gone before with Castlevania, and there was a little bit of nervousness that perhaps it wouldn't be accepted as a Castlevania game," Cox told GameReactor.

Though he claims the project was approved originally as a Castlevania game and was built from the get-go with the vampire-hunting series in mind, the folks in charge at Konami had cold feet going into the big reveal at Games Convention 2008. "Senior management took the decision that we were going to announce it as Lords of Shadow, see what the reaction is, and if it's a good one then this would become a fully-fledged Castlevania." It was definitely a good one.

[Via VG247]

Why 'Lords of Shadow' wasn't 'Castlevania: Lords of Shadow' at first originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 27 Nov 2009 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Interview: BioWare's Greg Zeschuk on Dragon Age, DLC, and more

Here's a Thanksgiving treat from the vault - we've dug out the following interview with BioWare co-founder (and Group Creative Officer of EA's newly formed RPG/MMO Group) Greg Zeschuk from earlier this year at PAX. But don't let the date fool you! Our discussion of multiplatform console development, DLC strategies on future BioWare titles like Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2, and Greg's recommendation that everyone buy two copies of the game (one on console and one on PC) defies time. Read on!


Joystiq: Dragon Age is the first PS3 game that BioWare's developed. Can you talk about that process?

Greg Zeschuk: We did partner with Edge of Reality, so we partnered with folks who have had the experience, and that was a good process where we actually had some folks that knew how to do it but also, in general, just worked together with them. A lot of it ended up being like we needed a lot of work to get done and a lot of stuff very fast and everyone was very busy on Dragon Age itself. Collectively, on the console, I would say it was very interesting and challenging to take the richness of the PC game of Dragon Age, with all these different powers and everything else, and actually try to transpose it to the consoles. And the interesting thing about that, or where it worked out really well, is that we literally set ourselves a goal: We didn't want console players to fell like we ripped them off by taking anything away, by minimizing or simplifying. We want them to feel they have all the power at their fingertips, but it's very accessible. It's got the multiple rings that sort of have subsets to them, and you can actually pretty much access any power just a couple little joystick twiddles and button presses. And so with that experience, I think we succeeded there.

Another place where we succeeded on both the PS3 and 360 versions: it feels very different from the PC. Where the PC has got the traditional Baldur's Gate top-down [perspective], the PS3 and 360 are over-the-shoulder and they do have that kind of, very KOTOR feel and that's probably what I play, and that's what I feel most familiar with is KOTOR -- and it actually feels more action-y than the PC does, so I think people will find a very different experience. I recommend both platforms actually, PC and console versions.

Continue reading Interview: BioWare's Greg Zeschuk on Dragon Age, DLC, and more

Interview: BioWare's Greg Zeschuk on Dragon Age, DLC, and more originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 26 Nov 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.