THQ has announced its plans to bring the Up video game, based on the upcoming Disney/Pixar film, to all major systems worldwide beginning in spring 2009. Up is currently in development across seven game systems, including Mac, Windows, Wii, Nintendo DS, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Playstation 2, and PSP. Development for the Up video game is being led by THQ’s Heavy Iron Studios, the same creative team responsible for the video games based on Ratatouille and WALL•E.

The Up video game will take players on an adventure with Carl Fredricksen and his young sidekick, Wilderness Explorer Russell, as they set off on a journey through the undiscovered jungles of South America. Players will be able to experience all four main characters from the movie -- Carl, Russell, Dug the lovable dog or Kevin the prehistoric bird -- while playing as a single-player or with a friend cooperatively throughout the entire game. Players will encounter new environments as they navigate through treacherous jungle terrains, battle dangerous creatures, and trek the slippery slopes of the Amazonian Tepuis. In addition, the game also features multi-player game modes, including an epic level that will allow up to four players to compete in aerial combat.

About the Up Movie:

From Disney•Pixar comes “Up,” a comedy adventure about 78-year-old balloon salesman Carl Fredricksen, who finally fulfills his lifelong dream of a great adventure when he ties thousands of balloons to his house and flies away to the wilds of South America. But he discovers all too late that his biggest nightmare has stowed away on the trip: an overly optimistic 8-year-old Wilderness Explorer named Russell. From the Academy Award®-nominated director Peter Docter (Monsters, Inc.), Disney•Pixar’s Up invites film goers on a hilarious journey into a lost world, with the least likely duo on Earth. Up will be presented in Disney Digital 3-D in select theatres. The film is due for release on May 29, 2009.

Up Video Game

THQ

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Mac|Life has posted a new review of CSI: Hard Evidence, the fourth game in the series adapted from the television show. In Hard Evidence players must use forensics and interrogation techniques to get to the bottom of five cases. Mac|Life gave the game a score of 3 out of 5.

From the review:

Working your way around the process of evidence gathering is somewhat tortuous and certainly gets repetitive. Mucking about with forensic gadgets is fun, and examining pieces of evidence in order to discover minutely important details is amusing. But having to perform three-directional clicks to simply access a computer, or spending several minutes figuring out how to reach a clue that’s in plain view, is dead tiresome.

Even so, the awkward procedural stuff remains engaging, thanks in no small part to some tight scripting. Physically gathering evidence might be a pain, but the payoff is a fresh insight into the crime or the opportunity to question a suspect who has been slow in coming forward. Fans of the 
TV show will, of course, love solving these five grisly cases. For the rest of you, while we can’t really recommend Hard Evidence on the basis of being a well-constructed game, it would be remiss of us not to mention that we kept coming back for more in spite of our reservations. One last warning is in order however: It’s not a game for youngsters. The ESRB gave it a Mature rating for “blood and gore, sexual themes, and violence.”

Mac|Life: CSI Hard Evidence Review

Ubisoft

TransGaming

CSI: Hard Evidence

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More information about Diablo III, the upcoming return to Blizzard Entertainment's popular action RPG franchise, is now available on the official forums thanks to community manager Bashiok. The topics this time include the possibility of guns in DIII and the potential to encounter monsters with full immunities.

will there be guns in Diablo III?
I'm not sure that I said "no" so specifically, although... hrm maybe I did. What I meant, through invisible force of will which I attempt to dredge my posts in and then fry up like so much chicken, was that I've overheard a collective reasoning not to pursue them.
In the wake of that uncertainty I think we should just be glad that Mount Arreat is gone, along with most of it's inhabitants.

will there be full immunity in Diablo III?
Jay has said, and I don't have exact quotes so I'm going to put it into my own words, that full immunities aren't something we're looking to have in Diablo III right now.
He added though that as we plan for people to have a good amount of active abilities at their disposal, there may not be the issue of having say... a Wizard with only ice damage spells late in the game where immunities would normally be seen.
So if we were to have immunities, but also a broad range of abilities with various damage types ensured to be available, it would be more a situation of the player just needing to intelligently use the different spells they have. At that point it becomes a method of injecting strategy into approaching a fight. The spell variety and build potentials, or rather limitations in this case, remain to be seen to some degree.
I think if we can determine that players will always be able to damage a monster regardless of immunities, then they remain a possibility. More than likely though, if I had to guess at this point, you'll see resistances to specific spell types rather than full immunity.

GameBanshee: Bashiok Diablo III Comments

Blizzard Entertainment

Diablo III

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A recent blog post on the CodeWeaver's site reveals plans for the future of its CrossOver virtualization products. Among the upcoming additions is support for Direct X 10 and interface streamlining. CrossOver, and the games specific CrossOver Games, allows users to run Windows applications without having to install the operating system itself.

We've just shipped a lot of those 'under the hood' improvements for games out in CrossOver Games 7.2. We're really pushing Direct X 9 support pretty far along, and getting ready to move on Direct X 10.

In the next few months, we'll be shipping CrossOver Linux 8.0, and CrossOver Mac 8.0. That revision of our flagship product will bring support for IE7, modern QuickBooks versions, Quicken 2009 (at a nice speed), Photoshop CS3, and many many other improvements, particularly around Microsoft Office and specifically Outlook.

After we ship version 8, and make sure we keep Games fresh as well, we're going to turn our focus to our next major revision. In addition to our normal work of broadening and deepening our application support in Wine, we're going to try to dramatically improve the CrossOver GUI itself. First, the Linux version will get a fresh new look. But both versions are going to get an interface that we hope will bring the power of the Compatibility Center right into the installation view. The key idea is to make it easier to distill the gathered wisdom on unsupported applications and make it far easier to use. I hope we'll have that available before the end of the year.

CodeWeavers Blog: The Outlook For 2009

CodeWeavers

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