Painkiller: Resurrection gold, in stores Oct. 27

JoWooD Productions and DreamCatcher Games announced that the horror themed action shooter sequel, Painkiller: Resurrection, has gone gold. The Austrian development studio Homegrown Games has just completed production on the latest title in the Painkiller series and the game is set to hit stores across North America on October 27.

In Painkiller Resurrection players take on the role of ‘Wild Bill’ Sherman as he once again tackles the denizens of purgatory who are a notoriously unfriendly lot for obvious reasons. The game promises new levels, new monsters, new bosses, a new story, improved shadows, a higher resolutions, moveable light sources, post processing, motion blur, ambient occlusion, a new cooperative multiplayer campaign mode and more.

JoWooD will publish the game in Europe.

SpellForce 2 – Faith in Destiny announced

JoWooD Productions and DreamCatcher Games have teamed up once again to bring a sequel to SpellForce to North America. SpellForce 2 – Faith in Destiny combines real time strategy with role-playing game elements wrapped up in a whole new story about a showdown between good and evil. Further details on the game are under wraps right now, but here’s what JoWooD had to say about today’s announcement.

“Developing another game in the SpellForce saga is an exciting opportunity for us. Faith of Destiny is developed incorporating feedback from the community and feedback from those who have assisted in the development of previous Spellforce games,” says Clemens Schneidhofer, PR Coordinator at JoWooD Productions. “I’d like to add that we bow before the loyal fans of the brand and want to thank all of them for their amazing support.”

The game will make its way to North America sometime this winter for the PC and will be published by DreamCatcher Games. Expect to hear some more about the game next week at E3 Expo 2009.

Painkiller gets Resurrected

Be prepared for another descent into the world between Heaven and Hell.

JoWood and Dreamcatcher have signed on small Austrian developer Homegrown Games to produce another Painkiller game, Painkiller: Resurrection. The new team will be using an upgraded version of the original game’s engine, and will be adding a co-op multiplayer mode, created by Dr. Steven Wilkins and known by the name Blowfish in the Painkiller community. It was Wilkins who came up with the PK++ mode that added competition-style elements to the original game.

As with the original, the hero (antihero?) gets caught in Purgatory after he kills a few bad guys and a few innocents along with them. The game again revolve around the quick, in-your-face action style of DOOM and Quake, while the main character is used as a pawn by the forces of Heaven and Hell.

The game is planned for late this year, and IGN is reporting that an Xbox 360 version may come out sometime after that.

It will be interesting to see how this develops, literally. I played through the original and thoroughly enjoyed the action. I’m hoping they can come up with enough new gameplay to keep it fresh. Some games that have successfully capitalized on the old-school action have fallen flat in the sequel.Serious Sam 2 pulled off a good sequel, so we know it can be done.

The Rundown: Jan. 27, 2009

Welcome to another scintillating edition of The Rundown. Today we highlight new downloadable content for Fallout 3, the release of Coraline and Afro Samurai, cuts to EA’s UK PR workforce and more. Check it all out after the jump.

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Evil Under The Wii

The Adventure Company and JoWooD Productions have teamed yup to bring Agatha Christie: Evil Under the Sun to the Wii, currently in development and set for release in October, the game is based on Agatha Christie’s classic murder mystery novel, Evil Under the Sun. This is the second title from The Adventure Company’s Agatha Christie video game series to release on Wii. Evil Under the Sun promises to take advantage of the Wii’s unique features such as group gameplay, allowing groups of friends and families to gather around the television, sharing the Wii Remote, discussing and solving puzzles together.

Taking on the role of Hercule Poirot, players scour a tropical island for clues and delve deeper into the mysterious relationships between over 20 unique characters to search out the killer.

Look for the game this fall.

JoWooD: Gothic 4 Screens Not Ours

JoWooD Productions issued a statement today about screenshots that were allegedly from Gothic 4, the next chapter in the popular European role-playing game series being developed by Spellbound. The screenshots, which the publisher adamantly insists are not authentic, recently made their way to the Internet and onto several gaming Web sites. JoWooD’’s complaint with those screenshots is that they don”t even come close to the aesthetics in the game.

Gothic 4 will far exceed the aesthetics shown in the mentioned screenshots, said Johannes Natterer, Head of Marketing at JoWooD Productions. At this stage of development we feel that it is too early to release screenshots of the game.

Okay, we get it, not yours.