Nintendo Announces Pokémon Black and White for Nintendo DS

Nintendo has announced that the massively popular line of Nintendo DS Pokémon titles will grow by two this year, at least in Japan, with the release of Pokémon Black and Pokemon White.

While we can all assume what the games will contain – the same polished “gotta catch ‘em all” gameplay from the many previous handheld iterations in the series, that sees our hero traveling from town to town, collecting badges and well as Pokémon while defeating some evil empire – apparently things might not be so black and white (forgive the pun). Joystiq has translated the Pokémon home page as saying that in these games, “every aspect will be reborn innovatively.”

We’ll have to wait until April 15 for more information, as a teaser site has, well, teased, that more information will be made available on that date.

Halo 2 E3 Demo Was “Smoke and Mirrors”

Bungie’s admitted to Eurogamer that the Halo 2 E3 2003 presentation was a fanciful snapshot of a game that could never be recreated on Xbox hardware.

“The graphics engine that we showed at E3 2003, driving around the Earth city… That entire graphics engine had to be thrown away, because you could never ship a game on the Xbox with it,” said Chris Butcher, engineering lead on Halo 2.

“Through putting ourselves through hell, we were able to do a five-minute demo of it, but after we came back from E3 we had to admit that this graphics engine was never going to work - it was never going to support the kind of environments that are really important for a Halo game.”

“So we literally scrapped the entire graphics engine and started from scratch.”

That E3 2003 Halo 2 reveal can still be found on YouTube, complete with audience whoops and cheers as dual-wielding and Covenant vehicle-stealing mechanics were shown.

But an overly ambitious E3 demonstration turned out to be the precursor of a wild development cycle, in which hype and disorganisation created a monster in need of a brutal haircut and weight-loss programme.

“We were building stuff that just couldn’t be played, in any engine,” revealed Butcher. “We built, and detailed, and went a huge way down the path with a whole bunch of environments and levels for the game that just totally didn’t make it.

“If you look at the level with the Flood, inside the quarantine area - that is the remaining 20 per cent of a gargantuan, sprawling level that was meticulously built and hand-constructed, but that could never, ever have shipped in any engine.”

Monster Hunter Tri Gets Online Quests

With the launch of Monster Hunter Tri now just around the corner, it has been announced that along with free online 4 player co-op and WiiSpeak compatibilty, there will also be online quests to participate in which will offer rare items to the hunters that dare participate. A full rundown on what to expect can be found just below.

Event quests: 4 players can join together that meet the required hunter rank to participate in numerous challenges and fighting out against monsters of varying difficulty. These event quests will also offer the 3 specialized weapons that fans of the series dreamt up for Capcom some months ago. For hunters too low a rank to join in, they will have to work on their hunter for the next time that specific event returns.

Gigantic Monster Quests: Specialised 1 day events, so make sure you're quick to take up these. Challenges put players against the mighty Jhen Mohran whilst on a ship, which will have you make use of the ships cannons as well as your own hunting skills.

Arena Quests: These put 2 hunters to work together in coliseums battling massive beasts, or in a time-attack mode which will offer better rewards the faster your completion time is.

Capcom's Monster Hunter Tri is set to launch on April 23rd in Europe. Stay tuned for our very own review shortly!.

Army of Two DLC Fix "Soon" - EA

EA has told Eurogamer it hopes to solve the Army of Two 2 downloadable content problems "soon".

But for now, a week after release, add-on Chapters of Deceit still has faulty Achievements and Trophies.

"There is a known issue affecting Achievements in an Army of Two DLC pack. We are looking into a solution and hope to provide an update soon," said an EA spokesperson, relaying a message from developer EA Montreal.

Chapters of Deceit adds two new campaign maps to Army of Two: The 40th Day, but doesn't stuff enough content to warrant the 800 Microsoft Point (£6.80/€9.60) or £6.30/€7.99 price.

2K Sports to support Move and Natal

2K Sports is to support the new motion controllers for the Xbox 360 and PS3 in its games, according to an interview with marketing boss Jason Argent.

Argent didn't offer any details - but when asked by the list-daily if there were plans to include functionality for "new motion controllers" in future 2K Sports games, he simply said, "Yes... stay tuned!"

Sports games are a natural fit for motion control, especially baseball; Argent was discussing the latest in 2K's MLB (Major League Baseball) series.

Expect to hear more at E3 this year, when Microsoft is due to lift the lid on its Project Natal 3D camera device, and Sony will show more of PlayStation Move.