OMG Okami

1. First up, and perhaps the most grave news today, is that Grand Theft Auto IV might be delayed. Until Xmas, 2008. Seriously. If EA buys out Take2 successfully, then EA would find it more profitable to wait until the holiday season to release the game. Just wild. The game is still currently slated for its scheduled release date later this month, April 29. Pray.

2. Baroque, a rare RPG on the Wii (also the PS2, but still...), has been released today. And to somewhat sour reviews. Well really one review, Nintendo Power, who spats "All in all, Baroque has few redeeming qualities, and your money is better spent elsewhere." Ouch! I was sort of looking forward to the magical potential of that one. Despite the fact that it has perhaps the blandest, most indistinguishable title out of any game in years. Is the follow up sequel Classical next? Guess we should instead push forward to Chocobos beating things up in dungeons on the Wii.

3. Ikaruga is out on XBLA tomorrow at 9 A.M. You might be saying that Ikaruga is not an RPG. You'd be wrong though. It skillfully puts you in the role of the most tortured, defeated and yet somehow entertained gamer on the face of the planet. The plush and frantic top-down shooter was first in Japanese arcades in 2001, then the Dreamcast in 2002 and finally the GameCube in 2003. Ever since, it's been the obscure-awesome-title-scoured-for-on-eBay-and-used-stores, and now it arrives in its glory for 800 MS points. Get it.

4. City of Heroes Issue 12 has entered closed beta, titled "Midnight Hour." But it's extremely closed. Friends/family/pets, sort of thing. There are no patch notes, and the WarCry source even mentions that you can't view Epic Villain Archetypes yet either. A torturous bit of news, really.

5. According to a recent survey in the Korean Times, MapleStory has 63 million players worldwide. That's just a staggering number. Waaaay more that WoW, for instance, which clocks in at a dwarfed 10 million. Just thought that was pretty crazy.

6. CVG has some compelling quotes from Warhammer 40k Online MMO creative director Joe Madureira, who boasts that the characters will have "tons of cool stuff hanging off of them, weapons, scrolls... we are going to have the coolest looking characters of any MMO, ever. Once we begin releasing images, feel free to call me on that." Which is such a good idea we're shocked it's going to take two years to arrive.

It's becoming common knowledge that unless you're offering some sort of retailer "goody bag" along with a purchase of a game at launch, well then you don't have a cool game launch. The Simpsons Game offered a little Homer/Katamari ball; Burnout Paradise offered exclusive unlockable cars.

And now, the highly anticipated and tragically delayed Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning MMORPG is going ape-sh#$ with preorder mayhem. The official preorder page claims the following:
-Preorder the Collector's Edition ($78.99 on Amazon.com) and get early access to the open beta
-Also be a part of the "Live Game Head Start" thing, which will let you play the full game several days before the full launch.
-And, here's the real treat folks, receive all this magical in-game swag: Rittenbach's Portable Camp, Sentinel's Amber Band, Guardian's Iolite Band, and Champion's Sapphire Band. We have no real clue what all that does, but it sounds expensive. I wonder if on launch day kids wearing this stuff will get beat up; like the kid wearing Air Jordans on the first day of sixth grade.

The only hitch is that Massively reports that the retailers have their heads up their respective hind quarters with actually delivering on the unlock codes for all of this. Your best bet is to head over to Amazon.com, buy the game there, and then go into Your Media Library/Downloads. Your codes are safe and secure there, far away from some Best Buy 'tard who'll shove you out of the store without your bleeping codes. Can't have that.

In what seems like a match made in heaven, Square Enix has announced today the furry cooing Final Fantasy mascot, the Chocobo, will be coming exclusively to the Nintendo Wii on July 8 in the form of Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon.

In a land where the inhabitants have lost their memories, the game revolves around Chocobo and Sid, featuring turn-based RPG dungeon crawling, mini games, a Final Fantasy-esque job system, and enough sugary cutesy squawking to make even the staunchest Wii fanboy's teeth hurt.

What's unclear to me, is whether from the title we are to infer that the Chocobo's maintain and operate dungeons, or that they are imprisoned and are being contained inside of a dungeon. Thoughts?

In any case, we're glad to see a decent RPG make its way to the Wii. Maybe there will be a "blood code" in the final version? Probably not, just as long as we get some Chocobo's throwing down in some dungeons and tearing stuff up, a'-warking like mad, we're happy.

[via Nintendo Wii Fanboy]

Cosplay is one thing. Putting on a wig and a costume to look like Pikachu is about vanity (?) and a bit of fun. But these individuals here serve a higher cause. Justice. They venture out into dangerous city streets to beat up bad-guys, armed with naught but their superhero costumes, flashlights, booming voices and goodwill. And their iPods. Hit the jump for our list of the most ridiculous real-life superheroes on the planet.

If you're a Square Enix fan you should be drunk with joy. Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII ships for the PSP tomorrow. Which means you'll be able to go and get it tomorrow. At the airport. Or the pier. Or maybe if you bribe a GameStop employee to go to the airport or the pier, otherwise it "ships" tomorrow, which means Wednesday in real life. When will the game industry stop with the "ship dates" and just tell when it's out? I've seen too many message board threads with braggarts in middle America claiming they have the game because of magical mistakes.

Also on the Square Enix plate today is a new "members only" website with some exclusive content. Members only means you can access the site after VII easy, long, arduous steps in order to look at everything. Check out the Q&A with Crisis Core developer Hajime Tabata. Also, create a Shinra employee I.D. Ok, there's not much up there currently, but the site just launched.

One thing, in the Q&A with Hajime Tabata, he speaks of why they chose to make Crisis Core a bit more difficult in the Western version, mentioning that "games released in Western markets are generally of higher difficulty than those released in Japan." I feel weird disagreeing with this man, but see Ikaruga for a small example of why I'd disagree. Maybe he meant differently.

Anyway, joyous is the day when I own Crisis Core. Cheers to that! Already getting slathered with positive reviews and such.

St. Patricks day. Ah yes, the day that St. Patrick banished snakes from all the dungeons in Ireland, or something. Whatever the true meaning of St. Patrick's day is it can't be denied the day is synonymous with beer. For MMORPG'ers, this presents a problem. How does one pound Guiness while trying to organize raids, level up and type articulately? You've got to keep your priorities straight.

But never fear, Massively has a nice little collection of MMORPGs that are getting in the spirit of things with "beer quests" and what not. Now you can get soused in the virtual world while safely drinking grapefruit juice in the comfort of your dungeon.

The best of the lot is most definitely LoTRO's St. Patrick's day quest which awards one fresh Inn League Keg for completion. And when you finish the quest you'll wake up in a different part of Middle Earth! Fantastic.

In what will be the sixth entry in Square Enix's let-us-torture-you-with-the-idea-of-remaking-FFVII project, aptly titled the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, the PSP exclusive RPG Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII will land in the U.S. on March 25th. The game is set seven years before the events of Final Fantasy VII (let us refresh you: Sephiroth tries to kill the planet by sucking all the planet's energy to himself, so Cloud kills him instead), and puts SOLDIER members Zack and Sephiroth on a mission together to resolve the disappearance of a fellow SOLDIER member in Wutai. Cloud, Tifa, Aeris, and yes, Sephiroth, are all back.

Visually the game should have you drooling RPG excitement, and it was reviewed favorably by Japan's faux-prestigious bastion of video game journalism Famitsu. But all of this doesn't make it any less torturous. It is, afterall, not really an actual remake of Final Fantasy VII. I'm not sure how much closer Square Enix could come to remaking FFVII without actually doing it. There have been two feature animated films and four games milking the series to death. Crisis Core even strongly resembles what you could picture a FFVII remake looking like.

Oh well, I'll buy it. I have to. We all have to. Stay tuned for updates on the game's launch later this month.

This is too cool to pass up. I even did a page on this at mahalo.com a while ago but didn't realize it was post-worthy.

Here's how you do it. Play as Snake on Shadow Moses Island against whoever. When the match starts push down on the D-pad (sickeningly fast) to trigger the codec conversations. I've heard "push down and punch, or punch and down" but no official say on it really. We seemed to get it when doing some sort of rapid seizure movement involving down and a button in some way. Nintendo what's up with that?

Anyway the codec conversations are great. It's funny to hear important military calls about people like Yoshi or Jigglypuff. Or Wario, here's a bit of his:

CAMPBELL: "Wario loves garlic. He eats whole cloves of it day and night, so try not to get caught in his mouth. Once that smell gets on you it'll stick to you for quick a while."
SNAKE: "That's a scary thought."
CAMPBELL: "He also attacks by farting. He can fart to fly around too."
SNAKE: "By farting?! Are you kidding me?!"
CAMPBELL: "Sadly, no. I am not kidding. If his belly starts to bulge, watch out."

And people accuse RPGs of being campy...
Anyway back to RPGs.

Well versed RPG enthusiast and Nintendo guru Lynxara of our sister site, omgNintendo, has taken the time to list out seven of the ill-conceived design trends commonly found in most American and Japanese RPGs. A great read for those of us who spend our days/nights/weekends eyebrow deep in the various fantasy worlds that companies like Square Enix and Atlus present before us each year.

Click here to check it out. Be sure to tell 'em Arturis sent you, and you'll get to read the article at half price! (Of course, 50% of Free is still Free)

Today in utter defiance of recent conservative criticism, Mass Effect released its first batch of racy DLC: an entire space-harem, in which you are awarded points for wildly bedding as many women as possible in every position. There's also rebellious rock and roll playing, and dancing.

Ok kidding, but that would have been awesome if BioWare did that.

The content pack is called "Bringing Down the Sky," and pits Commander Shephard-n'-crew against a gang of Batarian bad guys who've sent a space station hurling towards collision with the peaceful planet of Terra Nova. 400 MS points (and a save spot where you have access to the Normandy ship) gets you in.

There's 90 minutes of brand new gameplay and a new Achievement worth 50 gamer points. For anyone who owns Mass Effect this is a no brainer.