Latest News And Features

So here's a confusing one - out of Microsoft's TGS announcements comes news of a Steel Battalion reboot titled Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor. For those who never experienced the original game (probably because it got a super limited release in Australia) Steel Battalion was renowned for featuring two things - a controller with 40 buttons (including 2 control sticks and three pedals) and a learning wall - not a curve, a wall.

Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor on the other hand is a Kinect game. So it's gone from the console game with the most buttons to a console game with no buttons. There's no half measures with this game! Head over and watch the announcement trailer in our or download it from our files library to watch it over and over.

The screenshots in Limimi's Amnesia: The Dark Descent review paint a very... black picture of the game - when I was putting the review up I accidentally put two of the same screenshot in and I didn't realise it until I looked at the image filenames. When expanded though, they show off a small portion of the atmosphere which makes the game so good.

The developers have done an amazing job of using sound and visuals to further increase the tension and feeling of terror. Daniel’s teeth chatter and his heart beats loudly as he becomes more frightened and your vision blurs and swims as you lose your grip on reality. The music is eerie and unsettling while you explore the areas of the castle and builds to a crescendo when a monster is searching for you.

If you're undecided on picking up Frictional Games latest title, make sure you head through and read our review!

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

This week Andy takes us through Dead Rising 2: Case Zero - available on the Xbox Live Marketplace for 400MS Points now - before moving on to show off his arty side with Art Academy on the Nintendo DS. Before he wraps up he gets Sony Big Boss Michael Ephraim on camera to dish the trash talk in the Wii vs Move war, and we finish with the promise of Tokyo Games Show 2010 coverage!

Watch the Weekly Update in your browser by leaping over to our videos library or download it from our files library.

Konami today announced Silent Hill 8 for the Xbox 360 and PS3. Proving that you can never keep a good evil town down, Silent Hill 8 brings survival horror back to next gen consoles. Following a prison transport accident our protagonist, Murphy Pendleton, finds himself stuck in the town of Silent Hill.

Naturally that's when s**t gets real. From the press release,

Gamers will encounter mind-bending puzzles, as well as horrific creatures and otherworld terrors using everyday objects from wooden chairs to glass bottles to fend off their enemies.

At some point it falls to the government to be responsible for Silent Hill, surely. And surely it's about time they closed all roads in and out of the town. Maybe that can be the plot of Silent Hill 9 - a fencing contractor accidentally takes a wrong turn on the outskirts of a town some say is evil - when he wakes, he's walled in... by evil!

Remember last week when we told you about the Xbox 360 controller with a dynamic dpad? It's here if you missed it. Well it looks like Microsoft Australia/New Zealand has finally settled on a price and release date for the hardcore controller.

On November 9 you'll be able to purchase a brand new Xbox 360 controller with an actual dpad, instead of the mushy mess of a control pad Xbox gamers have been using since the original Xbox - as long as you have the AU$99.95 MS is asking for it. And if you're a New Zealander you can pick it up for NZD$109.95 - it seems that twisty dpad technology doesn't come cheap. The controller pack does include a pay play-and-charge kit alongside the controller.

What do you think of the price point? The same controller is going for US$64.99 in the US, so there's quite a premium added for shipping across the Pacific - is it worth the price to get the level of control you're used to on pretty much every other controller ever?

This week Andy takes us through the new DSi XL colours coming out, plays Flight Control in HD and 3D on the PS3 with Move controls (that's getting a little ridiculous), scopes out an awesome Justin Bieber game trailer and races me while playing Kinect!

It's all in the latest Weekly Update, available to watch from your browser in our videos library or you can download it to watch anywhere with the right codecs from our files library! Who else is digging the new intro? I think Andy got jealous of the starting music for the GA Podcast!

Not a lot of games anger me as much as Rugby League Live has this week - regardless of how you view the actions of the players off the field the game of Rugby League is a fantastic sport and it deserves much, much better than what Big Ant games has come up with.

Still, if you didn’t read [my Rugby League 3 review] you missed this amazing piece of foreshadowing - ‘Rugby League 3 gives me hope in the idea that at least Rugby League 4 couldn't conceivably be worse.’ Big Ant Studios must have read my review and taken that statement as a challenge then, because Rugby League Live is a mess.

It's disappointing being a fan of Rugby League and a Gamer these days, because the two never, ever meet. I'm a fan of sports games in general - which makes things even worse, as I see the treatment Football, NFL and Hockey gets and I can't help but feel like the publishers of the Rugby League games are deliberately exploiting their fans.

There are rumours that AFL might be getting the same treatment as Rugby League Live - I hope not, because it's another sport which deserves a lot better. Head through to our reviews library and read the GameArena Rugby League Live Review< now.

Microsoft's controller-less gaming experience - the Xbox answer to Sony's PlayStation Move and Nintendo's Wii - will hit Australian shores November 18 this year, and it will launch at $199 (an amount we broke during E3) for the giant camera and a copy of Kinect Adventures.

Microsoft are planning on launching the device with 15 titles, and I got... body-on with one of them Kinect Sports earlier today at their press event. My first impressions are pretty positive - there were concerns about the device suffering from some sort of lag - a delay between the player's movements and the movements on screen which would make gaming unruly, but I can happily report that this was not visible when I played.

If you can't show your face down the local arcade any more because the calluses on your thumbs have disappeared thanks to the Xbox 360's pathetic excuse for a dpad, rejoice! Microsoft has seen the light and are releasing a brand new Xbox 360 controller - one with a dpad that actually works!

Sure, maybe the purpose of the dpad isn't to give you blisters on your digits - it's actually used for precise and accurate control in games where you feel an analog stick is too imprecise. This has made the Xbox's mushy pad (the d in dpad stands for direction, so it hasn't ever really applied to the Xbox controller) something of a joke - especially in fighting game circles.

The change involves a controller with a dpad you can twist - you have either a dpad or just a pad depending on how mushy you want to play your games. Pictures in the full article!

Bad news for Canadian, Mexican, UK and US Xbox Live gamers - it was announced earlier on Major Nelson's blog your prices are getting jacked up US$10 as of November 1.

The argument for jacking up the price is that it hasn't changed since 2002 and since then Microsoft has added plenty of new services - of course, since 2002 PlayStation has successfully launched its own rival network service, Nintendo has launched and OK network service and... oh, Microsoft has abandoned trying to charge PC gamers for the privilege of playing with their friends.

Of course this is only effecting the countries listed above - and there's no indication to say that it will suddenly be rolled out in Australia. We'll find out if Microsoft has anything planned along these lines in Australia though, and we'll let you know!