Gameplay

Xian Mei, one of the four main characters, preparing to attack oncoming zombies.
Dead Island will feature open world gameplay, played from a first person perspective, with up to four-player co-operative play (local and online) in a sandbox environment, including a heavily interactive environment. The focus will be on melee combat, incorporating customizable weaponry, vehicular customization/combat, and RPG elements.
There is an experience system and a skill tree system. There is also a stamina bar, meaning that after a set amount of action with a weapon, the character will need to stop to regain their stamina before continuing to attack. It has also been confirmed that there are “special class” zombies, which are more powerful than the standard zombie. Players will need to use flashlights in dark areas, adding suspense to the game. Night time and changing seasons have been confirmed to not take place during the game, although a weather system is in effect. Because of the ESRB rating system, there will be no children zombies in the game.

Plot

The game is set in the Palms Resort, in fictional Banoi, located off the coast of Papua New Guinea.
The first mission serves as the tutorial. The character wakes up with a lifeguard standing over him. The man helps the character up, and guides him/her to a beach hut with other terrified survivors/tourists. One person begs the character to go outside and help the lifeguard fend off the horde. The character then picks up a dinghy paddle and walks outside. After helping the lifeguard, a voice is heard over some speakers around the area, warning survivors the area isn’t safe.

Dear Xbox LIVE members,

We have a simple vision. All the entertainment you want, with the people you care about, made easy. Today at E3, we took another remarkable step toward realizing that vision, unveiling a whole new way to experience entertainment, where TV is more amazing when you are the controller.

We are transforming entertainment in the living room by bringing you more entertainment experiences and new ways to enjoy them.

Coming this year to Xbox LIVE will be UFC and YouTube, adding to our ever-expanding library of great entertainment, including ESPN, Facebook, Hulu Plus, Last.fm, Netflix and Twitter. We are also forging new partnerships to bring live television to Xbox LIVE in the United States and around the world, adding to our current partnerships with Sky TV in the UK, Canal Plus in France and FOXTEL in Australia.

And this is only the beginning; we will continue to bring more entertainment experiences to Xbox LIVE for you and your friends.

But the future living room does more than give you great entertainment; it helps you find and decide. It gives you simplicity, discovery and personal choice. With the power of Xbox, the simplicity of Kinect voice control and the intelligence of Bing, now you can just say it and Xbox will find it. Bing on Xbox gives you the easiest way to find the entertainment you want.

Every day, you and nearly 35 million other members of the Xbox community are pushing us to continue to deliver new and exciting experiences. Whether it’s playing “Call of Duty: Black Ops” (Activision) and “Halo: Reach” (Microsoft Studios) with friends, or catching up on the latest episode of “30 Rock” on Hulu Plus and watching college football on ESPN, our community is spending an average of 60 hours a month on Xbox LIVE. That translates to 2.1 billion entertainment hours a month!

This is an amazing opportunity to continue bringing you the games, movies, TV shows, music and more experiences you want. Thanks for pushing us to deliver more.

So we know you want to keep playing, watching, sharing and enjoying your time on Xbox LIVE. We are equally passionate in our efforts to continually improve and innovate the LIVE service, and I’m happy to share a glimpse of what is more to come:

· The New Dashboard. Simpler. Cleaner. Easier to navigate. With the addition of new entertainment content on Xbox LIVE and our commitment to continuously improving the overall Xbox experience, we’ve updated the dashboard with a new look and feel that makes it even more open, inviting and intuitive to navigate. All of your favorite content is categorized in a way that is easy to browse and find what you’re looking for, plus you can use voice anywhere in the dashboard to effortlessly navigate and get to what you want.

· Bing on Xbox. We are bringing Bing to Xbox. Bing on Xbox searches Netflix, Hulu Plus, ESPN, as well as our music, video and Xbox LIVE marketplaces to find exactly the entertainment you want to enjoy. With Bing on Xbox and Kinect, you can effortlessly find the games, movies, TV shows, sports and music you want by only using your voice. You say it, Xbox finds it. The experience is now simpler than ever before.

· Expanded Kinect Voice Support. We want Xbox LIVE members around the globe to experience the magic of Kinect’s voice recognition technology so we are committed to bringing voice to eight additional markets by the end of this year with a total of 13 markets that will have Kinect voice. We are also exploring some innovative new ways to enable the LIVE community to help us accelerate the refinement of voice models in new markets, and look forward to sharing developments on that front soon.

· Beacons. We want to make it easy for you to connect with friends over your favorite games on Xbox LIVE, so we are introducing Beacons to the service. Beacons are a way to tell your Xbox LIVE and Facebook friends that you want to play a game on Xbox LIVE. By setting a Beacon, you tell Xbox LIVE what you want to play. Then, Xbox LIVE lets you know when friends are playing or want to play the same game. With Beacons, no matter what you’re currently doing on Xbox LIVE your friends know that it’s ok to ask you to play your Beaconed games. Imagine sending out a Beacon to let your friends know you’re interested in playing “Halo,” while watching a movie on Netflix. It’s about making it easier for you to share and discover games and multiplayer opportunities with friends on Xbox LIVE.

· Cloud Storage for Game Saves and LIVE Profile. Here at Xbox LIVE we listen to your feedback. We are making it easier for you to sign into your Xbox LIVE account from any console at any time to access your game saves and full profile, including items such as Microsoft Points to make purchases, Achievements and friends. Cloud storage will allow you to enjoy the same great Xbox LIVE gaming experience even when you’re not in your own living room by giving you the option to store your “game saves” securely in the Xbox LIVE cloud instead of on a portable memory unit or your console’s hard drive. Gone are the days of “gamertag recovery.” Now all you need to do is sign in, no matter where you are!

· Summer of Arcade. For the fourth year in a row, we are excited to bring you the hottest Xbox LIVE Arcade titles with Summer of Arcade. Starting July 20, enjoy five consecutive weeks of the season’s most highly anticipated downloadable games, including:

o “Toy Soldiers: Cold War” (Signal Studios/Microsoft Studios). Jump into the fray with playful ’80s combat action in “Toy Soldiers: Cold War.” Bring your favorite action toys to life and wage war against the red menace. Need backup? Call in a friend for co-op campaign action on the couch or over Xbox LIVE. Take a break from the main battle with Survival mode and playful minigames. When you beat your LIVE friends’ scores, they’ll be gunning to reclaim the top spot!

o “Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet” (Fuelcell/Microsoft Studios). This side-scrolling, 2-D, action-adventure game takes players on a journey through the curious Shadow Planet worlds, unique environments filled with twisted life, surreal ecologies, hostile creatures and environmental hazards. Players explore the depths of several interconnected themed areas, fighting swarms of enemies, battling bosses, solving mind-bending puzzles and acquiring power-ups to unlock new parts of the map.

o “Fruit Ninja Kinect” (Halfbrick/Microsoft Studios). The worldwide gaming phenomenon “Fruit Ninja” is now coming to Kinect for Xbox 360 in its juiciest form yet – YOU are the ninja! Your arms are now blades, and the battle against the world’s most delicious produce is just beginning. “Fruit Ninja Kinect” is an amazing evolution of the slice-em-up genre created by Halfbrick, utilizing next-generation precision power for the juiciest combat ever!

o “Bastion” (Supergiant Games/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment). “Bastion” is an action role-playing experience that redefines storytelling in games, with a reactive narrator who marks your every move. Explore more than 40 lush hand-painted environments as you discover the secrets of the Calamity, a surreal catastrophe that shattered the world to pieces. Wield a huge arsenal of upgradeable weapons and battle savage beasts adapted to their new habitat. Finish the main story to unlock New Game Plus mode and continue your journey!

o “From Dust” (Ubisoft Montpellier/Ubisoft). Discover a unique Modern God game in which nature is the star. “From Dust” is the latest original concept by Eric Chahi, visionary creator of “Another World.” Behold the beauty of a primitive world pulsing with life and face the might of nature. Beware the danger of a world that is constantly changing under your command. Control the destiny of a tribe struggling to survive and help it recover its ancestors’ lost powers. Immerse yourself in a world as exotically beautiful as it is dangerous. A universe where nature reclaims what is hers and you are your people’s only chance of survival.

Also today, Kudo Tsunoda announced Kinect Fun Labs Kinect Fun Labs which brings innovation to Kinect owners and offers more exciting ways to have fun. It’s all about creating magical moments with never-before-seen Kinect technology and new Gadgets available all the time to experience and share with your Xbox LIVE friends.

This is just the beginning. This year alone we are taking Xbox LIVE from half a million pieces of content to hundreds of millions, all controlled by your voice. Our mission is to forge partnerships with the best known entertainment companies throughout the world so everyone can experience how TV becomes more amazing when you are the controller.

Xbox LIVE gives you all your entertainment on one box, where you can use your voice to easily control, search and decide. I can’t wait to open the doors to your new home for entertainment this holiday, and rest assured, there is more to come.

See you on LIVE,

Marc Whitten
Gamertag – Notwen

What I expect from E3.

Sony
Talk about PSN debacle
Talk about Sales
Talk about 3D,Move etc
PS3 Games/ trailer (1st, 2nd and 3rd party)
Then talk about NGP
Reveal name of NGP (PlayStation Vita)
NGP Games
NGP Price and Date

Microsoft:
Talk about Kinect
Halo 1 HD
Gears Of War 3
Xbox 3D
rated R Kinect games
Other games (1st party)
COD MW3

Nintendo:
Wii games (The last story, Xenoblade, Kirby game etc)
3DS System update (internet browser, eShop etc)
3DS Games (Zelda, Kid Icarus, Mario 3D, Mario Kart 3D etc)
Show of new console (Project Cafe)
Reveal name
Demo (games etc)
Price
Date

What do ya think?

FEEL FREE TO TRANSLATE

Nvidia demos the new Tegra 3 chip, codenamed Kal-El.

You’ve got a weird device on your hand. It looks sort of like a stubby TV antenna, but when you point it at things and activate it, the target ages or gets younger, depending on which way the dial is turned. In Singularity, it’s the standout gameplay mechanic. You use it to wither human foes into dust, or morph them into slavering monstrosities that puke bile and attack anything in sight. You can crumble bits of cover or tear down larger pieces of the environment by aging support beams until they crack. With barrels, you can fast-forward time so they flatten, or reverse it until they’re whole, and explosive, once again and toss them at your enemies.

It’s not just for use with combat, but also for puzzle solving. The environment is a desolated island that years ago a Russian outfit was using as a center for experimentation. They’d been dealing with E99, a temporally unstable element, and of course their efforts had blown up in all their faces. When the United States caught wind of strange readings in 2010, some 60 years after the incident, an investigation is launched and one plane is sent, which crashes. You play as the co-pilot, and around the E99 splashed environments it appears you’ll have some odd adventures.

For the puzzles, you’ll have to do things like age forward and back machinery to get it in working order, or use a detection light to see things from the past and pull them into the present. You’ll also get hit with rolling time waves that send you flying back to 1950, and the interplay between the two time periods will fuel the story and how you go about solving the whole mess.

Eventually you’ll also pick up an E99 gun. If you aim down the sights before firing, you’ll enter into a slow-motion mode that follows the bullets and allows you to control their path of flight to a degree. I got to try out a short section with this weapon and it was entertaining. The added layer of the time-warping abilities could be interesting depending on how the ideas are developed throughout the course of the game. And in case you’re curious, you can’t just spam time abilities. There’s a limiting power meter, so you’ll have to wait a bit before performing a second powerful time-bending technique.

Hopefully the game lives up to its potential when it’s released for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC platforms.

Holy crap. Against our wildest expectations, Apple just approve the Opera Mini browser for the iPhone, and it’ll be in the App Store within 24 hours. Original iPhone users should be reallllllly happy right now. [Opera]

Opera Mini App approved for the App Store
Oslo, Norway – April 13, 2010 – Opera today announced its popular mobile browser, Opera Mini has been approved for iPhone and iPod touch on the App Store. Opera Mini will be available as a free download within 24 hours, depending on market.
Opera Mini, with more than 50 million users worldwide, enables fast mobile Web browsing by compressing data by up to 90 percent before sending content to the device, resulting in significantly improved page loading. Users of the app will notice an uptake in speed, especially on slower networks such as the 2G Edge network. Surfing the Web with the Opera Mini App on iPhone and iPod touch will also help users save money because of its data compression capabilities. This will hold especially true while the user is incurring roaming charges.
“We are delighted to offer iPhone and iPod touch users a great browsing experience with the Opera Mini App,” said Lars Boilesen, CEO, Opera Software. “This app is another step toward Opera’s goal of bringing the Web to more people in more places.”
The Opera Mini App is available for free from the App Store on iPhone and iPod touch or at http://www.itunes.com/appstore/.

This is the moment you’ve all been waiting for! The guys over at Gizmodo have got their paws on what seems to be an internal Google document revealing pricing for the HTC Nexus One, both subsidized and unsubsidized. Getting right to the point, the Nexus One will be $530 unsubsidized and $180 subsidized with a new 2-year contract with T-Mobile. Here are some details to take note of:
-$530 Unsubsidized price tag
-$180 Subsidized (new 2-year contract)
If you want the phone at the $180 subsidized price there is a catch. There’s only one rate plan: $39.99 Even More + Text + Web for $79.99 (umm…What if I want unlimited minutes?). According to Gizmodo’s Tipster, existing customers cannot keep their plan if they want a subsidized phone; they have to change to the one plan, and this only applies to accounts with one single line. Family plans, Flexpay, SmartAccess and KidConnect subscribers must buy the phone unlocked and unsubsidized for $530. Also you can only buy five Nexus One phones per Google account. Google will sell the handset at http://www.google.com/phone.
And if you cancel your plan before 120 days, you have to pay the subsidy difference between what you paid and the unsubsidized price, so $350 in this case. Or you can return the phone to Google. You also authorize them to charge this directly to your credit card.
Google’s set up some pretty tight requirements. Seriously though, what is up with only being able to get the Nexus One subsidized at that one price plan? 500 mins, I go through that in less than 2 weeks. I really hope Google makes some last minute changes to their requirements.
How’s the pricing looking? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

[ Full Screen recommended ]

Written and Directed by: Rodrigo Blaas
Produced by: Cecile Hokes
Music: Mastretta
Art Director: Alfonso Blaas
Lighting Supervisor: Jonatan Catalán
Character Technical Supervisor: Jaime Maestro
Character Design: Bolhem Bouchiba, Carlos Grangel,
Sergio Pablos, Santi Agustí
Animation: Daniel Peixe, ManueBover, Remi Hueso
Sound Design: Tom Myers and David Hughes
Post Production Coordinator: David Heras
Special Thanks: Keytoon, Next Limit, UserT38

Full credits: almashortfilm.com