In a story on the unveiling of Brett Favre as the cover athlete for Madden NFL 09, I linked an interview that GameTap did with one of the game’s lead designers, Phil Frazier. In that interview, Frazier boldly proclaimed that Madden 09 features “the biggest graphical improvement we’ve ever had year-to-year in Madden” (console generation jumps notwithstanding). Sure, it’s easy to be cynical and assume that this is another empty promise, but we’ve happily been proven wrong this time around.

GameTrailers has a three-minute video that directly compares the graphics of Madden 08 and Madden 09 on the Xbox 360 in six ways: lighting (at 4:15 PM), grass effects, weather effects (heavy snow), and three different player models. It doesn’t feature any gameplay footage, but it’s all in-game video of camera pans in a static stadium (the footage looks care about it could’ve been taken out of the instant replay tool). Hit the jump for my analysis of the video.

Oh, and if you’re craving some more details on how Madden 09 is shaping up, IGN has just put up a new three-page preview, and it’s subtitled “The most additions we’ve seen to the franchise in years”. Here’s something from the preview that will hopefully shut up all the people who continually deride sports games as ‘annual roster updates’:

Madden 09 does not redefine videogame football. It doesn’t take the classic Madden formula and turn it upside down. What it does do is it takes so many of the tiny things from last year’s game and improves on them exponentially. They aren’t details that can be seen by watching a short gameplay clip or looking at screenshots. They’re the things that you don’t realize about the game until you pick it up and play it for yourself…

That’s what sports games are all about. Not revolutions, but evolutions, so to talk. We sports gamers don’t usually take kindly to any major shake-ups; incremental improvements are what it’s all about. Each year, sports game developers try to create a more accurate simulation of their respective sport, and we notice even the smallest changes. Alright, I’ll get off my soapbox now.

Via Destructoid

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Think Final Fantasy games have never-ending cut scenes?

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Having only played through some of the demo for Haze, I’m not even going to comment on the quality of Free Radical’s PlayStation 3 first-person shooter. I will state that the four-player cooperative drop-in/drop-out sounds really promising. But here’s the problem — that feature doesn’t work.

According to a current thread at the official Ubisoft forums, when you try to invite a friend to your game, the game prompts you to download and install a patch. This would be fine, but seeing as how a patch doesn’t exists, one can easily see the issue. It’s unclear why the game would ship with this ridiculous and significant issue, but let’s hope that Free Radical and Ubisoft are on the case.

Any Dtoiders have this issue? How are you enjoying Haze otherwise? Anyone just waiting for the Xbox 360 version*?

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Ubisoft’s pre-Ubidays frenzy continues, this time with some screens and story information for their upcoming aerial combat title, Tom Clancy’s HAWX.

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Filed under: News, Rumors

After getting our new Gears of War 2 announcement hopes up over the leaked EGM article only to have Cliff Bleszinski deny it all, we get word that next month’s issue of UK magazine X360 will feature exclusive new GoW2 details as well. And, if the leaky news source can be trusted, we’re in for one hell of a bloody good ride come November.

With no actual magazine scans to view or any way for us to confirm the news, the contents of X360 magazine’s GoW2 article were recently posted over on GameTrailers’ forums for all to examine, pick apart and question. If the list can be trusted, we’re in for a whole mess of exciting new Gears additions including a new flamethrower called the “Scorcher”, a new “Wingman” gametype that pits five teams of two against eachother and the announcement of a new mobile bullet shield to take cover behind. You can check out the complete (and absolutely unconfirmed) contents of X360 magazine’s Gears of War 2 article after the break. And we have to admit, there isn’t a darn feature we have the ability to complain about.

Also, remember children that we’re still treading in rumor territory until this X360 info can be confirmed. So, we advise keeping your excitement level to a minimum, because we wouldn’t want to see your fanboy heart crushed if the news turns out to be made up crud.

[Via NeoGAF]

Continue reading Rumor: UK magazine unveils all new GoW2 details

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Via Xbox360fanboy

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Filed under: News, Videos

Update: Thanks to X3F reader Josh, we embedded the drum’tacular World Tour video after the break. You’re welcome …

The not at all English website InsiderGamer posted a new Guitar Hero World Tour video that gives us a better look at the game’s drum set, the design process behind it and a first look at Blink 182’s Travis Barker in a mo-cap suit. For realz! You can view the video after the jump and take in all the World Tour drumming that it has to offer including velocity sensitive drum pads, which we admit are so very next gen. And would it be wrong for us to think that these drums might possibly be better then what Rock Band has to offer? If it is, forget we ever posed such question.

[Thanks, L1B3RATION]

Continue reading Video: The drums of Guitar Hero World Tour [update]

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Via Xbox360fanboy

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