She actually speaks in this game!

If you have read some gaming news recently, you might have noticed that some gaming sites managed to get their hands on Metroid: Other M demo at Nintendo Media Summit. If you’re interested to read some of the impressions of this demo, then here’s a handful of sites that got to play this demo: 1up, Destructoid, GameSpot, IGN.

As a huge fan of the Metroid series, I was thrilled when I heard that Metroid: Other M was announced at E3 last year. But after seeing the trailer, I was skeptical. To me, the game didn’t look like a Metroid game at all. It reminded me of some spectacular fighting game of some sort.

But the trailer was somewhat confusing, so I still had high hopes that this game will be good. And after reading some of the impressions of this Other M demo, I am happy to see that the demo was well-received.

It's like 2D, but it's 3D!

The game is supposed to be some sort of “third-person and first-person” hybrid. You mainly control Samus in a third-person mode by holding the Wiimote sideways and when you flip the Wiimote and point it at the screen, the game goes into first-person mode. While in first-person mode, you can’t move at all which may sound odd, but looking at the impressions, the first-person is really useful for finding out nooks and crannies and killing some enemies.

It’s also nice to see that Nintendo is adding a lot of things story-wise. There are cut-scenes throughout the game that both progresses the story and gives some background info of Samus. Some sites have already stated that the voice acting is horrible on some of the characters, but at least Samus supposedly sounds good.

Hey! It's the "Remember me?" guy!

Those are the main things that caught my attention. I really hope that Other M will mainly focus on adventuring like with all the Metroid games. I mean, Metroid is well-known for its adventuring, right?

We’ll just have to wait and see if this game is worthy enough to carry the title “Metroid”.

Image source: Destructoid

Nuclear Launch Detected!

Hell, it’s about time! StarCraft II has finally gone into beta!

Many peeps have already gotten their beta invite, but no need to worry if you didn’t get one! Blizzard will be constantly sending out beta invites in waves so just wait for a while and maybe someday you will get that invitation!

En Taro Adun!

Out of the... Umm, fake?

Recently a Need for Speed fansite, Need for Speed Shift, posted a picture on their website and claimed that it was concept art of EA’s newest Need for Speed project, called Out of the Law.

It didn’t take long for Criterion to debunk this. Criterion posted a tweet on their twitter account, stating that all the stories of this newest project are fake.

NFS stories on the net today – 100% FAKE!

Bad news for Need for Speed fans. I have never been into racing games myself, so I didn’t feel too bad to hear that this was fake.

FPSMMO?

There has been quite a lot of rumors going around that Infinity Ward may be working on a CoD MMO for quite some time now. And now Destructoid reports that Infinity Ward is hiring people from from Sony Online Entertainment with one of them possibly being the lead designer of EverQuest II.

We’ve gotten word that IW is hiring people from Sony Online Entertainment, one of which may be the lead designer of EverQuest II, and that a member of Blizzard employees may also be involved to help Infinity Ward get this new title off the ground. Our Intel seems to indicate that Call of Duty will continue as an annual franchise while IW runs this MMO alongside it.

FPSMMO! Is Infinity Ward going for it? Who knows.. Just remember that this is speculation and nothing is official yet! So don’t go down to Infinity Ward’s offices with torches and pitchforks yet.. or if you like the idea of an FPSMMO, don’t go hugging and throwing flowers at the staff members of Infinity Ward just yet!

Something like this if you replace everyone with cartoonish characters.

After reading today’s gaming news, I stumbled upon a couple of mentions about this new “Xbox Game Room” that was revealed at CES 2010 (International Consumer Electronics Show). So I decided to find out what it was. Luckily I found a trailer that shows what it’s like.

According to Destructoid, this Game Room will be a channel that has over 1000 old school classic games. You will be able to create a custom arcade rooms and play against your friends.

Destructoid later added that you can buy these arcade games for 240 to 400 points or you can buy them for just 40 points and every time you die, you have to pay 40 points to play again.

I guess it’s going to be like “The Sims meets Xbox Live Arcade” or something. Virtually playing virtual arcade games? That may sound a little weird, but I do like the idea behind it. Let’s see how it turns out!

"Your orders, Templar?"

Zerg and Protoss fans weren’t happy to find out that StarCraft II was going to be released as a trilogy of games, first part of the trilogy being Wings of Liberty that only has the Terran campaign playable.

But Protoss fans do have something to look forward to because StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty also contains a Protoss mini-campaign! Xordiah from Blizzard’s RTS Community Team confirmed this on the Battle.Net forums

I won’t go into details, since we don’t give out information on the campaign of StarCraft 2, but I can confirm that there will be a Protoss mini-campaign that lets you control Protoss units. This part of the campaign mode is of course way shorter than the Terran part, but it is very fun to have a very different playstyle to add even more variety to the game. I am sure every Protoss fan will love this part of the Campaign!

That being said, the Protoss mini-campaign will not prepare you for the multiplayer as Protoss, you won’t be using all units or getting to know buildings and upgrades.

Protoss is my favorite race in StarCraft so I am happy to hear that there is going to be a short mini-campaign for Protoss in SC2: WoL, even though it might be just 2-4 missions. Thankfully both Protoss and the Zerg will be playable in the multiplayer of WoL.