Some highlights of the Assassin's Creed II discussion panel at Comic Con this year. Spliced with some decent footage from the game and people cheering after hearing simple stuff like now there are 15 mission types. woooooo. Towards the end is an interview with Pierre Raymond, Prez, from Hybride Technologies talking about the live action AC II development.

I swear we are not turning into a "games on film" site. It's just that Hollywood is trying to steal all of your money, and I like reporting on it. So, the powers that be have signed the writer of the prequel of the remake of Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre to adapt InFamous. So you can pretty much file this project under "wait for it to air on the SyFy channel." Luckily for "writer" Sheldon Turner, InFamous should be relatively easy to adapt once he decides whether he will be good or evil. It being Hollywood after all, my money is on evil. If they are looking to save this mental dump with casting, I vote for Chris Evans as Cole.

Sega has just released a new trailer for their upcoming Alien vs. Predator game. The trailer focuses on the easy breezy life of a space marine trying to squash a small Xenomorph infestation. Call me crazy, but I love playing as the marine in these games, but then again I am masochist. Facehuggers in a dark bathroom? H.R Geiger inspired jump scares? Running low on ammo, obviously outnumbered and no hope of surviving? Sign me up Hicks. Nice, I made it the whole post without ranking on Paul W.S. Anderson. Click here for the trailer.

Any and all hope I had for Hollywood churning out a solid Castlevania film just blew up in my face like Danny Glover's torso. James Wan, director of Saw and a movie about killer puppets has been tapped to direct Castlevania. Wan had my respect with Saw, and while it wasn't the most visually interesting movie, it redefined horror (for better of worse) and showed what could be achieved with a small budget and a hard-on for Se7en. His career henceforth though has been less than inspiring. With Wan helming this flick I get the feeling that this adaptation is going to have a minimal budget. Castlevania is going to be the definition of a smash and grab. As if it wasn't bad enough having Nintendo selling your youth back to you, now Hollywood is hip to the trend. 

According to the soulless vapid omniscient eye of Variety, D.J. Caruso has been tapped to direct an adaptation of EA's Dead Space. Caruso is best known for his film Disturbia, a spiritual remake of Hitchcock’s Rear Window. Caruso has a great eye and I couldn’t be happier with this choice. Every sci-fi horror film that takes place in space will be compared to the poorly aging Event Horizon. I was personally fearful that the director of that film, Paul W.S. Anderson would end up helming the Dead Space adaptation. So forgive me if I seem a little too happy about this news, but I loved Dead Space and I love science fiction films. This announcement certainly completes Caruso's metamorphosis into a  studio director, but I wholeheartedly trust him with this property.

LucasArts has announced new expansion for the hit Star Wars: The Force Unleashed as well as a new retail version of the title Star Wars The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition. The expansion, is a basically a Tatooine Map that will take players on an entirely new unexpected direction after the end of The Force Unleashed. Re-imagining the saga as if the secret apprentice had killed Vader and assumed the role of the Emperor's apprentice, becoming the most powerful Sith Lord in the universe. The 'new' story line has you traveling to Tatooine to hunt down Obi-Wan. The Ultimate Sith Edition is looking to release this holiday season and will combine The Force Unleashed story line with three new levels to create the ultimate-evil storyline of the events between the two movie trilogies. The additional content will be two levels, Corusant and Tatooine, that are already available via direct download and a new level only available in the Ultimate Sith Edition. The exclusive level has the secret apprentice traveling to Hoth to crush the Rebellion once and for all with a face to face with Luke himself. Check out the official site for more info. 

New trailer for Borderlands - the game I was really excited about until they completely revamped the art style and made it look like a cartoon. Lame. But looks like it could still be good - 4 player co-op could be really cool along with 87 bazillion guns. Being toted as an RPS (role playing shooter) Borderlands is looking at an 10/20 release date.

And the trend continues...this time with Bioware, a studio of EA, and Dark Horse Comics announcing a new comic book series based on the hit game Mass Effect. The sci-fi comic will act as a prequel that will bridge together Mass Effect and the mysterious beginning of Mass Effect 2. The comic entitled Mass Effect: Redemption, cause it sounds cool, is scheduled to launch January 6, 2010. The story will be penned by Lead Writer Mac Walters at BioWare. While John Jackson Miller (Star Wars KOTOR, The Invincible Iron Man) will do the scripting and Omar Francia (Star Wars Legacy) will handle the drawing. The 4 part series will explore new locations, aliens and enemies of course. 

This might be a first - a childhood favorite killing another childhood favorite in cold pixelated blood. I'm sorry but this might be, could be, most likely will be - a horrible idea. As you may know Spike Jonze is bringing the classic tale to film - which actually looks pretty amazing and I'm ok with.  What I'm not too pumped about is it becoming a video game - we say it over and over again but movie to games don't usually pan out. But of course Hollywood and co. will continue to milk all things that came from my generations' childhood, because we're supposed to be at the point in our lives where we're making money to spend on their frivolous attempts at grabbing on our nostalgic heart strings. Sorry, rant over. So Warner Bros. Interactive and Legendary Pictures have announced that a videogame will be released in November in conjunction with the film for all major next gen consoles and Nintendo DS.  The title will be developed by Amaze Entertainment and will have players assume the role of the rambunctious young Max...actually if you don't know how it goes pick up the books. You'll get the idea.  

Activision and Treyarch have announced Call of Duty: World at War Map Pack 3 earlier today while I was asleep at the posting wheel. The pack, which will feature three multiplayer maps (Battery, Revolution, and Breach), will be available sometime in August. On top of those 3 maps which were co-developed with partner Certain Affinity will be a new zombie map "Der Riese." Visit www.codwaw.com for more info.

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I meant to post this last week so we may be a behind on it but we usually are on most things. Plus it's too sweet not to see again. This is the trailer for the anticipated PC (only platform as of right now) title Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet. A title from Michael Gagne who approached the game with an animation background - hence the amazing look and smoothness. Check out his blog / the official site for more info and to get some more background about this cool title.

While game development costs for triple-A titles, like Halo and GTA, start reaching into the budgets of major films (GTA IV estimated at $100 mil - about the same for Starship Troopers, Terminator 2, Minority Report among others) so does their need advertising dollars. We've commented before on in-game advertising and everyone has an opinion on the matter from it effecting gameplay to the once independent industry selling out. Well to grow you kind of have to sell out in some form. In steps indie games. Titles like "The World of Goo", “Braid” or any indie titles found on PSN or XBL are starting to stake a claim in the gaming landscape with their 'casual' popularity. Speaking of popularity have you heard of this thing called the iPhone? Thought so – seems like 1+1=$$ for advertisers and developers.

The big issue is getting that placement or making it work for the developer and the game itself. It would be a bit obvious if the hero had to blast cans of Pepsi to reach the next level that something was up. But with digitally distributed titles cutting out the large middle aged man - something the music industry has been dealing with for awhile now - means a nice direct to consumer relationship for developers. It also means there is room for piracy and loss of money – something else the music industry knows a bit about. But if done correctly with advertisers, developers can then offer their games for free, and with indie games having easy access to consumers and low development costs – this makes advertising cheap. Something both developers and advertisers want and more so developers need to survive and continue to make the titles they want. [more insight and better organized thoughts]