Machinima usually comes in the form of cheap, pixelated, and distorted Youtube videos. However, when you’re Activision, and you’re marketing for one of the biggest games of the year, there are a few specific perks to make your 50 second PSA actually kind of clever.

Infinity Ward has teamed up with Cole Hamels, and produced a Fight Against Grenade Spam PSA. After you’ve figured out that little quip in the title, hit the break for the full video.

Of course, there are a few things we can nitpick out of this trailer:

- Personalized names and clan tags?

- Replays (similar to Halo 3?).

- Usable vehicles? (The door to the jeep closes at the beginning of the video).

Releasing a trophy or achievement list long before a game ships is a great way to generate some hype amongst hardcore achievement/trophy hunters out there.  A recent p0st on TheSixthAxis outlines Dark Voids trophy list, although not confirmed, many are far too specific to be fake.

Hit the break for the complete list along with ‘how-to’ descriptions of each trophy.

Bronze

Prologue
Complete Prologue

Crash Site
Complete Crash Site

The Village
Complete The Village

Spare Parts
Complete Spare Parts

Village Attack
Complete Village Attack

Prophesied One
Complete Prophesied One

The Survivors
Complete The Survivors

Prison Escape
Complete Prison Escape

Defending the Ark
Complete Defending the Ark

The Collector
Complete The Collector

The Revolt
Complete The Revolt

Dear Diary
Found a journal

Tesla’s Apprentice
Upgraded first weapon

Grand Theft…UFO?
Hijacked 20 UFOs

Blind Luck
Kill one of each enemy footsoldier using blind fire

Captain of the Ship
Destroy 10 enemy aircraft while yours is on fire

Forgot My Tow Cable
Fly through an Archon’s legs

Fireworks
Kill 10 enemies by exploding a piece of dynamite in the air

Get Your Feet Wet
Buzz the water

99 Red Balloons
Kill 10 enemies while they are in an anti-gravity bubble

Cliffhanger Killer
Kill 50 enemies while in vertical cover

Death from Above
Kill 50 enemies while in hover

Bird of Prey
Kill 25 ground enemies using your rocket pack guns

Mark of the Adept
Kill 5 UFOs in the Prologue

Rocket Clothesline
Perform a melee right after turning off rocket pack thrusters

Terminal Velocity
Free fall for 10 seconds

The Squishy Center
Kill a Sarpa piloting an Archon

Cleanup on Aisle Three
Kill 100 enemies with headshots

Rochambeau, I Go First
Kill 50 enemies with melee attacks

Blue Light Special
Kill 3 enemies with one grenade

Killing Spree
Kill 10 enemies within 60 seconds

Those Aren’t Fortune Cookies
Step on 10 slugs

Master of Arms
Kill an enemy with every weapon

I’m a Rocketman, Baby
Perform 100 special maneuvers while using the rocket pack

Float Like a Butterfly
Kill 10 attackers immediately after escaping from their melee

Silver

Into the Void
Complete Into the Void

Breaking Camp
Complete Breaking Camp

Tower of Return
Complete Tower of Return

Bookworm
Found all journals

Grease Monkey
Upgraded all weapons

Pack Rat
Acquired 30,000 Tech Points

Demolition Derby
Collide with another UFO 10 times

Big Bang
Destroy a Knight using a grenade

Light Up the Sky
Destroy 25 targets with the Ark’s AA guns

The Devastator
Destroy 25 UFOs while piloting a Survivor fighter

Gold

Dark Void
Complete Dark Void

Ultimate Bad Ass
Complete Dark Void on Hardcore

Platinum

Dark Void 100% Complete
Earn all trophies

Dark Void is set to release January 12th (North America) and January 15th (Europe)

The most successful apps on the iTunes store are the ones which revolve around simple, easy to manage mechanics without any intrusive on screen joysticks or broken tilt controls. Appy Entertainment’s Zombie Pizza doesn’t possess any of these problems, but it is let down by its lack of genuine gameplay.

In years prior, I’ve become way too familiar with the rush and stress of working in a pizza shop on a busy Friday night or first Monday of the school holidays.  Zombie Pizza’s clever little back story is the world has been taken over by zombies, and it’s your job to stay alive and work at ‘Zombonies Pizza’ to feed an army of the living dead their favorite food… pizzas?

Actually making the pizzas is done in an industrialized style kitchen where the ingredients are spat out onto a conveyor belt for you to throw onto a pizza base, and then, literally throw them out the window.  There are a few different recipes that must be followed in order to not fail the level and keep the zombies at bay. As each base consists of four sections, these recipes are well thought out, as they don’t require specific types of ingredients.

There must be either two pairs, four different or four of the same ingredients on each pizza. After completing a pizza, they must be thrown to the zombies by swiping up on the screen with your stylus; it’s a nice touch that is a bit more interactive then tapping a generic “done” button.

Getting the ingredients onto the pizza from the conveyor belt is done by simply dragging each item off the belt and onto a quarter of a base. A mechanic that works relatively well during the opening levels when there is room between items. It’s during the later levels (divided into four weeks) when there is no accurate way to select anything on the belts. This quickly becomes a mad storm of swiping randomly hoping for the correct ingredients to land on the pizzas.

The difficulty curve in Zombie Pizza begins slowly with gold medals (based on the amount and value of pizzas made) easily earned in the first three weeks (21 levels). It’s in the fourth week that a combination of three different bases and multiple ‘special orders’ had me failing days over and over, just after easily passing the previous level. The addition of multiple bases, new ingredients and jars (which need to be broken to reveal ingredients)  are just means to artificially elongate the game without actually introducing any new content.

None of this is helped by the game’s Mario-esque Pizza shop owner “Zombini” whos-a Italian accent gets-a old really fast…a

Oh please..

All things aside, Zombie Pizza does a great job of creating a panicked and rushed atmosphere, a feeling I know only too well. Playing Zombie Pizza with headphones will allow players to enjoy the various moans, groans and screams of the undead, which if you’re running a little behind, will really start to get to you.

The constant beating of zombie fits on the pizza shop window also add to the tension and will actually get rowdier as you fall further and further behind in your orders. Although, this may be overlooked by most players, as a meter indicates how close you are to failing. It’s kind of disappointing to see the obvious hard work that went into the sound design is lost and then replaced by an obnoxious meter.

Zombie Pizza doesn’t necessarily do anything severely wrong. However, underneath the pretty façade is a game that just doesn’t do enough to entice the player and keep him/her engaged past the first week or two of playing.

Zombie Pizza: 4/10

Download it now:

CG cut scenes always have had a special place in my heart. For years they acted as reward for finishing levels or defeating seemingly impossible bosses. Dragon Age: Origins, which is set to release early November, has shown us all how pre-rendered cutscenes/trailers should be handled in the ‘next gen’.

Hit the break for the trailer, and marvel all its bloody and brutal glory.

Well, of course you’re going to be cold if you’re going to the mountains to battle dragons when you’re dressed like that.

Brutal Legend is set to be one of the biggest games of ‘Rocktober’. However, if you’re like me, hearing the multi-player aspects being described as “action, real-time strategy and battle of the bands” was really off putting.

A new multi-player trailer explains exactly how easy (and fun) it will be to outwit, outplay and ultimately destroy any army/band that stands in your way.

All I can say is “finally”! We get to see a multi-player mode which doesn’t appear to be a tacked on afterthought.

How much Brutal Legend will use this RTS mechanic is uncertain, but we’ll find out soon!  The game is set for release October 13th (US) and October 16th (EU).

The World War II genre still has a few kicks left as The Saboteur gaining some prestige amongst press and gamers alike. A recent event has allowed lead game director Tom French to walk us through one of the more elaborate missions in the game without giving away too much of the storyline.

Some minor story spoilers after the jump.

So, it contains an open game word which will span over 5 kilometers, multiple game play methods, an amazing color palette, and let me play as an ex-race car driver turned Nazi killer?

The Saboteur just made its way onto my “must buy” list of 2009.

With the juggernaut that is Modern Warfare 2 looming over them, shooters with  large online communities may find themselves a little short of players a few months after Modern Warfare 2 sinks its teeth into us all. But there is hope, as Battlefield Bad Company 2 could just be the shining light in the darkness that is MW: 2, and has just received a 100% pure game play trailer.

Hit the break for the trailer in all its dusty goodness.

[WARNING. Contains swearing: lots of swearing]

No video effects, no dramatic music and no gimmicky voice overs here! Just straight up shooting, running and dying. Battlefield Bad Company 2 is set to launch March 2nd 2010

Unfortunately, the technology behind 5th Cell’s Scribblenauts falls short in evoking the creative genius within us all.

Solving puzzles in Scribblenauts is based on the premise of using any tangible object to retrieve the (occasionally hidden) ‘starite’ to complete the level. There are usually certain constraints within each level, so players can’t simply blaze through them with a machine gun, or use God as a personal bodyguard. Aside from its gigantic dictionary, Scribblenauts also has 12 different locations with 22 levels in each. Unlocking each location is done by purchasing them with ‘ollars’ earned after completing a level.

You earn more ‘ollars’ by completing levels and earning badges. The badges add a further sense of accomplishment, especially when finishing a particularly hard level; knowing that I could have just thrown a hair dryer in the ocean to kill the Kraken instead of taking a submarine is a really satisfying feeling.

For completionists out there, it is possible to finish each level three times using different objects to earn a gold star. It really encourages players to think outside the square. Each location in Scribblenauts is broken into two sections: action and puzzle. It’s in the action levels that Scribblenauts’ technical problems begin to rise, with seemingly easy levels becoming frustratingly only due to the game’s practical limitations.

Much of these limitations lie in the controls.  Maxwell is controlled by tapping where you would like him to run or what object he should interact with. With all controlling elements being mapped to the stylus, it’s a constant struggle of accidentally selecting objects, deleting them and watching Maxwell running around levels like a madman. This can make the simplest of tasks, such as “get the cat down from the tree,“ turn into a mess of dinosaurs, rockets and firemen.

It feels as if Maxwell is constantly running on ice with the only way to accurately control him is to deliberately tap a location and wait for him to arrive. Its a constraint that makes the later action levels (which occasionally are reliant on time ) a test of control and patience rather than an extent of the game’s list of objects.

Similarly, there is no “jump” button; Maxwell will automatically move up to any reachable height. To be honest, jumping is quite uselsess, as levels are designed in a way which a ladder or jetpack must be used to navigate them. On the other hand, jetpacks have a limited amount of fuel and the ladders are extremely fiddly to use; simply climbing to the top of a level can become a real chore.

Operating on a ‘2.5D’ playing field, the line between what Maxwell can run into and what is behind him is sometimes blurred, with Maxwell pushing giant weightless objects around the level completely destroying any kind of strategy put in place by the player.

It’s the individual moments where Scribblenauts really shines. Two prettified horses attached to a chariot at the bottom of a hill with a poltergeist chasing them toward a starite can never get old, or more satisfying. Although there are technically 22,802 words in the game, a large amount are copies of the same model eg; big bed, bed and queen bed all produce the same model.

Not to say that a majority of words are just copies, there is still a huge amount of words and objects that beg to be discovered. Although some words won’t behave at all like they should, it’s nice to see that they at least exist. For example, typing in “button pusher” will spawn a character, but they will not actually press any button nearby.

Scribblenauts’ ‘pieced together’ adorable art style is similar to Little Big Planet and Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts. Each object has a real sense of character that complements the tone of Scribblenauts. It encourages the player to “make” their own game. Whether it be a raging Kraken or placid lumber jack, each object has a distinct puppet like appearance, with limbs being held on with pins hanging from strings attached to clouds above. It’s a nice touch that conveys a particular level of detail that 5th Cell has gone to.

Scribblenauts is a game where the sky is the limit: a seemingly unlimited amount of objects and content will have players returning to discover new levels and scenarios. Unfortunately, poor controls and inconsistent physics hinder players from exploring Scribblenauts’ full potential.

With the release of a new trailer as well as a mini-developer diary from the games director and  designer, Fumito Ueda, things are really looking exciting for Team Ico. Hit the jump for the full video!

As the PS3 slim is my first ever Sony console, I’m not too familiar with team ICO’s work. I do know one thing for sure, If that bird/cat/dog/griffin dies, I’m going to bawl like a little girl.

Look for The Last Guardian sometime next year.

Microsoft, still trying to make their presence felt in Japan, have unveiled new Crackdown 2 screenshots at this years Tokyo Game Show. Its also good to see that those devilish orbs are back, and this time (to save everyones sanity), appear to be at least a little easier to find.

Hit the break for the surprisingly bloody goodness.

As a huge fan of the original, I’m glad that Microsoft stuck with the series, as Crackdown 2 will give me all the more reason to tear my hair out over those last few orbs.

With glowing recommendations that the PC version of 2K’s upcoming Borderlands will be the version to buy, it’s a little disheartening to see the PC version pushed back behind the 360 and PS3 release dates.

Hit the break for the official word from senior PR Manager, Charlie Sinhaseni.

“We’re optimizing the PC version which takes a few days longer than expected. Borderlands for PC will ship on October 26th.”

It’s good to see that this setback hasn’t affected the console versions of the game which will still ship on

-October 20 (US)
-October 23 (PAL Regions)

Its no secret that the Australian video game classification system is backwards. Earlier this week ,Valves blockbuster Left 4 Dead 2 was refused classification in Australia. A recent comment from Valves own VP of marketing Doug Lombardi has told Shacknews that “everyone at Valve is pretty bummed”.

Well yeah… so are we.

“We were surprised to hear of this news yesterday,” the executive informed us. “Obviously, everyone at Valve is pretty bummed.”

“It would be a shame if folks in Australia, or anywhere else, are unable to purchase Left 4 Dead 2 because of a ratings issue,” Lombardi lamented.”

From those comments its hard to say whether an altered version of the game is in the works and if it will be resubmitted to the OFLC. All we know for sure is that right now, Australia is not getting Left 4 Dead 2 and that my friends, is a bummer.