GamesBloggo - Your source on game news! January 2009

The “8 Ball” pack for Race Driver: GRID should be available today on XBox Live and PlayStation Network, according to what was reported by Eurogamer.com. It’s an add-on that brings new cars and a few additional multiplayer modes.

The new cars are the new McLaren F1 GTR, TVR Cerbera Speed 12, Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X, Honda S2000, Nissan GT-R (S-G2008), VW Nardo, Pontiac Firebird Trans AM and Volvo C30. For the Xbox 360 users, the pack also brings another 100 Gamerpoints to be conquered, all connected to the usage of the new cars.

The 8 Ball pack costs 800 Microsoft Points on the XBox Live and €7,99 on the PlayStation Store.

The usual update on the next downloadable contents for Burnout Paradise communicates the arrival of an expansion of a rather different size thant he normal auto-downloadable packs. Criterion has announced, in fact, the arrival (always scheduled for the first days of 2009) of “Big Surf Island”, a full new island that will add itself to the original gaming area. This addition also represents the first paid expansion for the racing game, that had managed to keep its original politics of “free downloadable contents”, as it was explained on the official site:

“We’d mentioned in a previous podcast that this would be free content, but we can now confirm that it will be premium paid-for content.

Here’s why.  We never expected to create anything this ambitious for the island, but as it progressed we got more and more excited about what it could become.  (In fact, that’s the story of all our Downloadable Content.)”.

Together with Big Surf Island, there will be a new vehicle, “Dust Storm”, essencially a dune buggy. Considering the amount of work, there’s not much to be complained about having to pay for the new DLC, really.

Codemasters has announced thet Colin McRae: Dirt 2 is currently under development, and it should be released sometime in 2009 for XBox 360, PC, PS3, Wii, DS and PSP.

According to what has been reported by IGN, the game should focus on “Exploring various disciplines of off-road racing”, and it should use an updated and modified version of the EGO Engine, the graphic engine that belongs to Codemasters and that already got some praises from the first chapter of the series. There will also be “comprehensive online modes that promise to be a marked improvement over those in the original”.

Capcom has issued a press-release informing the users that a problem in the PC version of MotoGP 08 has been encountered, during the installation process. The problem presents itself only if players change the installation path from the default one given. In that way, Capcom recommends not using the personalized installation to try and solve the issue. The standard folder for the game is “C:\Program Files\Capcom\MotoGP 08”.

Capcom should release a patch to resolve the bug during the next few days.

Criterion has intentions of launching a new edition of Burnout Paradise on the market on February, called The Ultimate Box. The box features essentially everything that has been brought to the Paradise City world since the game’s launch. That means the original game plus all the updates that followed, “Cagney” and “Bikes”, and a completely new mode: “Burnout Paradise Party”. The latter is an offline multiplayer game option, where up to 8 players can “pass the controller” to each other and engage in several different challenges, adding a “social” component that is characteristic of party games.

Burnout Paradise - The Ultimate Box should arrive on the market on February 2009. Those that already have the original game will be able to download the “Burnout Paradise Party” through a paid downloadable expansion.

Rockstar has announced that Midnight: Los Angeles, the new chapter of the automobilistic series developed by RockStar Sand Diego is now available in stores, for XBox 360 and PlayStation 3. The game brings together the “outlaw” racing-game style with a completely open and explorable scenario, an entirely poligonal Los Angeles that enlarges the game possibilities that were seen in the previous chapters.

Together with the “main” game, the PSP version of the game, Midnight Club: L.A. Remix will be available in stores in the next few days as well.

Criterion has been giving a great example on how a company can offer intensive (and free) support for their own games, with all the updates they’ve released so far for Burnout Paradise. And it’s still not finished, since the team still has four more expansions planned for their racing game, according to what was reported on their official site. It seems, in fact, that one of the four expansions will add a full new game area, an additional island that will add itself to the free-to-visit zones inside Burnout Paradise.

Those updates and expansions are previewed for next year. On October 31st, there will be more information about the game’s first expansion, and information about the following updates should come during the three first weeks of November.

After the confusion that arose after the publication of a temporary list of games to be launched for the Sony console, SCEE has finally cleared one point: Motorstorm: Pacific Rift will arrive on European markets on November 7th, instead of the previously announced November 14th. This info confirms, then, that the dates were far from being official, as Sony had declared back then.

It seems that November 7th is going to be quite a big day for the videogaming market, since not only MotorStorm, but also Tom Clancy’s EndWar will be launched that day. Not to mention that it’s also the launching date for the highly-awaited Gears of War 2.

Sony has confirmed the support for the “prologue” of GT5 with a new addition that arrived in the last few hours (according what’s been reported by Eurogamer).

With the free downloadable update, three new car models have been introduced: the concept car “GT by Citroen”, the Ferrari California and the Lotus Evora. The patch should start automatically as the game starts, and it also changes and fixes some game aspects, such as the penalty systems, the match events and more. The wireless control’s response seems to have been enhanced, as well as the audio balancing between sound effects and background music. Also, the Drift Trials now have a “rolling start”.

In Sony’s official blog, however, there’s the warning that the update will reset all rankings, Time Trial times, Drift Trial records and some advanced settings, as well as cancelling all the oldest replays.

Atari has announced that GTR Evolution is now scheduled to be released on October 30th, being this way postponed from the initial dates. In any case, the date’s pretty close. The title is an update version of Race 07, the recent automobilistic simulator from SimBin, considered one of the most complete softwares in the simulation field. GTR evolution comes as an addition to Race 07, sold either as a stand alone, or as a pack together with Race 07.