Crispy Gamer News

Electronic Arts has shipped Dead Space for the Xbox 360 and PS3, with the PC version shipping out on October 20. Dead Space will be in stores in Europe on October 24 for all three platforms. Dead Space is a horror survival game set on a derelict space ship under assault by a strange alien species that wants to kill everything human onboard. Scott Jones has reviewed the Xbox 360 version of the game and has found it to be just “okay.” Here’s an excerpt from the review - which you can read in its entirety after the quote:

Lights flicker. Corpses are littered about. In their dying moments, these dead people apparently found the strength to write helpful and not-helpful messages in blood on the walls. Someone wrote, “Cut off their limbs!” (Helpful.) Someone else wrote, “This ship is f***ed.” (Not helpful, but obviously very true.) The developers do a terrific job of laying on the terror nice and thick in Dead Space’s opening moments.

Read the rest: Crispy Gamer Dead Space Review

Like an unsexy director’s cut of Blue Lagoon, Konami today unleashed Lost in Blue: Shipwrecked, the latest survival adventure game from Konami - this time exclusively for the Wii. The latest installment in the Lost in Blue series allows players to explore the mysteries of the island with the help of pets and new friends as they search to find a way out or make a new life there forever.

As most Wii games do, Shipwrecked takes advantage of the Wii Remote and Nunchuk controls, while retaining the action RPG flavor of the series and introducing more than 30 mini-games including fishing, carpentry, fire-making and other all-new cooperative games.

Lost in Blue: Shipwrecked! is rated “E 10+” by the ESRB and is available for an MSRP of $29.99.

Some good news came out of Burbank this week: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment has changed the name of action horror game Project Origin to F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin. I am certainly happy that Monolith’s follow-up to the original game now has the proper moniker. The game with the spiffy new name will be published by Warner Bros. Interactive on February 10, 2009 in North America and February 13, 2009 in Europe. Here’s what WBIE had to say about the name change:

“The name addition builds upon the strong game recognition, which we will extend as we move forward reinventing the F.E.A.R. brand,” said Samantha Ryan, Senior Vice President, Production and Development, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. “F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin will continue the legacy of the original F.E.A.R. game with story and combat while adding new twists, gameplay and graphics to expand the players’ experience.”

Project Origin was to be published under the Sierra label owned by VU Games, which was all but abandoned by Activision Blizzard after the merger. WVIE bought back the rights to the game from the company, who was glad to sell it off and move on. I guess it’s a win-win for everyone.

Check out our coverage of the game before it became F.E.A.R. 2 in our Project Origin Preview.

New shots from Konami’s creepy survival horror game.

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Ubisoft this week announced a new survival adventure game called I Am Alive. The game is being developed for current generation consoles and will be released in spring 2009. I Am Alive is being billed as an edgy new survival game that follows the harrowing adventures of a lone survivor after an earthquake of unknown origin (Natural? government conspiracy? Aliens? They don’t say) rips Chicago apart. Players will be challenged to think, react and take risks that will directly affect themselves and those around them. You can expect to have to hunt for necessities and face environmental hazards and pitfalls on your journey of survival.

Expect to hear more about this from Ubisoft very soon. You can follow our continuing E3 coverage at our E3 Hub.

Yesterday Brash Entertainment announced a few more details on the Saw game, based on the popular and oftentimes graphically violent movie franchise. Today I solicited some comments from the company about the game’’s nature and how it would reconcile the copious amounts of shock and gore with an ESRB rating system that is much more strict than the MPAA’’s movie ratings system.

Given the game’s stage of development, Brash wasn”t willing to say much, but a company rep gave us the following one-liner: Brash has an experienced team of producers that have years of experience in managing ESRB ratings.

Well, it ain”t much, but it”ll do. We”ll follow this game as it develops and let you know whether it’’s shaping up to be something unique, or if it’s another title taking a dip in potentially controversial waters.

When Brash Entertainment announced its existence in June 2007, one of the odd properties that it revealed was the Saw movie franchise. Only odd in the sense that it would be difficult to bring the graphic nature of the film to a medium that does have its own set of limitations (like ratings guidelines). While I am not sure how the company will handle that delicate balancing act, it at least offered new details on the vision of the videogame today.

Brash announced that the videogame’s release would coincide with the next Saw film’’s debut, Halloween 2009. Brash also said that it is working closely with Saw creators Leigh Whannell and James Wan, to make sure the game experience is authentically horrifying and provides all the puzzles, shocks and suspense of the films. The game will also feature its own storyline that promises to answer several lingering questions, and will use Epic’’s Unreal Engine 3 technology to provide the eye candy and atmosphere. Saw is being developed for the Xbox 360 and Wii.

Finally the official site for the game went live today — but it doesn”t offer much beyond a sign-up form. Still, you can check that out at www.whoisjigsaw.com.

Hopefully the game will jump off the mediocrity train that the last few Saw movies have been riding and use the source material to create something entertaining. We”ll see.