A few days ago I saw a trailer for an upcoming movie called “Pandorum“. It’s one of those “scares-on-a-spaceship” films that have been knocking around in the film industry for a long while (spawning both b-movies such as It! The Terror from Beyond Space and, of course, big budget classics such as Alien). However, after I had viewed the trailer I wasn’t really thinking about films and, instead, felt like it shared a lot of similarities with Dead Space. We won’t be sure what the monsters actually are until we see the movie, but I’m willing to bet that the monsters are actually the crew just like in Dead Space.

Anyway, my point is that I was thinking that Dead Space might actually make at least an average guilty pleasure flick (I know there was a short animated film, but I’m talking live action here). Maybe “Event Horizon” with lashings of gore and an absence of Sam Neil tearing his own eyes out. A day later Variety had to go and make me think I’m psychic by revealing that EA are currently about to try and sell the idea of a Dead Space film to various studios.

Variety says that EA will produce the film with Temple Hill partners Marty Bowen (”Twilight“) and Wyck Godfrey (”Alien vs. Predator“, “I, Robot“). D.J. Caruso (”Eagle Eye“) is also set to direct the film, which EA are set to auction off to studios after they secure a writer. Apparently this could be as early as September, but that doesn’t mean we’ll be seeing the film at our local cinema anytime soon.

EA have recently secured a deal for a film version of their upcoming game Dante’s Inferno, and since that game doesn’t have the sales to go with the name yet the likelihood that Dead Space may get its own film has slightly increased. Couple this with the news that Dead Space may be getting two sequels (along with the already announced Wii game Dead Space: Extraction) and EA has a budding franchise to exploit.

At least we know that the guys who worked on the Resident Evil films have their hands full with “Pandorum” (because, let’s face it, we don’t really want yet another game franchise to be butchered when it makes the jump to the silver screen), but then again “Eagle Eye” wasn’t exactly great so I’m not holding my breath for a decent video game flick just yet.

D.J. Caruso to direct ‘Dead Space’ - Variety

(Image source: IGN)

Earlier this week over 15,000 fans formed a Steam community group with the aim to boycott the upcoming Left 4 Dead 2 launch. Left 4 Dead 2 was a surprise announcement at E3 – especially for Valve, a company that tends to take a long time to release a sequel – annoying many fans as they felt that Valve had promised to offer continued support and new content for Left 4 Dead. By releasing a sequel only a year after the first game gamers were starting to feel a bit short changed, as Left 4 Dead doesn’t have a great deal of content and the idea was that more would be added (only the Survival Pack has been released so far). Valve has now responded to these protests.

Speaking to Kotaku Valve founder Gabe Newell defended plans for the sequel, saying that its release would not change plans for the continued support of the first game

“Doing a sequel in one year is new for Valve. But providing ongoing support for our titles after the initial launch isn’t - it has been part of our philosophy since Half-Life was released ten and half years ago,” said Newell.

“We see no reason to change that and will continue to support the over three million customers in the L4D community. Some in the community are concerned that the announcement of L4D2 implied a change in our plans for L4D1. We aren’t changing our plans for L4D1.”

“In addition to the recently released Survival Pack, we are releasing authoring tools for Mod makers, community matchmaking, 4×4 matchmaking, and more new content during the coming months for L4D1,” Newell claimed. “We also agree with our customers that there needs to be an interoperability plan for players of L4D1 and L4D2, as multiplayer games are driven by the cohesiveness of their community.”

While it’s refreshing to hear that Valve will still be supporting Left 4 Dead I still don’t understand why Valve couldn’t have just released Left 4 Dead 2 as an expansion pack instead of a fully fledged game. It’s not looking much different from the first game anyway, so it could have just been a new campaign instead. I understand that Valve need to make money but that can easily be done by charging for new content, just like the Burnout Paradise developers do.
Gabe Newell can justify it all he wants, but I’m still not sold. What’s the point in updating two products that are incredibly similar? I’m willing to bet that Valve stop creating new content for Left 4 Dead a few months after the sequel is released.

A few days ago a viral video popped up on YouTube (see the bottom of this post). The video looked to be a viral for Dead Rising 2; which was further strengthened through the mentions of ‘Willamette Mall’ (the setting for the first game), the character Isabella, quick flashes of zombies in a casino (remember that Dead Rising 2 was rumoured to take place in Las Vegas), and a flash of ‘2′ at the end. Of course, you got the cries of ‘FAKE’ but the more intelligent of us got excited about a new sequel. Thankfully Capcom have now confirmed our ’suspicions’ that the video was for Dead Rising 2.

The game is coming to PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 (yay for multi-platform!). It will take place several years after Dead Rising in a place called ‘Fortune City’, a setting that confirms the earlier rumour as a fictional re-creation of Las Vegas. Apparently the zombie virus was not contained at the end of the first game and has spread across the U.S, leading to zombie outbreaks - one of which your character will get caught up in. Notice how I say ‘your character’, as there’s no sign of Frank and his trusty camera as of yet. Check out this gallery for more images of Dead Rising 2.

I’m incredibly excited for this game, and I even hope that they keep the time system in. They do need to fix the one save at a time system though, as that was pretty ancient.

Dead Rising was one of my ‘Bargain Bin‘ choices, so if you haven’t played it yet you can now pick it up on the cheap.

Eurogamer let’s us know that a “source close to Canadian developer Blue Castle” has told them that “the studio is making a sequel to Dead Rising“.

It’s  not the first time we’ve heard this rumour. Way back in February a rumor appeared that Blue Castle was listing an unnamed “action game” for the Xbox 360 as one of three projects. Then there were the rumours flying around that the game would be set in Las Vegas, although we’ve yet to see any evidence that shows this may be the case.

So why is this news any different? Mostly it’s because we haven’t heard anything else about the game since February, and even then we didn’t actually know if it was Dead Rising 2 or not. However, Eurogamer’s source has stated that it is Dead Rising 2 and that they “can’t wait to show off the game”. We won’t actually know if it is a sequel to the 2006 zombie-fest, but talk has been flying around for a while now and the source states that “it’s been hard to keep quiet”. Of course, whether or not this source is reliable remains to be seen.

I loved Dead Rising, so a sequel would be right up my street. Until we hear more about a possible sequel you can check out why I think the game is a great budget buy and then buy it yourself. If you haven’t yet played Dead Rising - but love zombies and video games - then you’re missing out on one of the best games the 360 has to offer.

Blue Castle making Dead Rising 2 - Eurogamer.