The game’s primary area is mainly made up of huge level select area but as you gain Gold Bricks you can access some new areas. From the level select area, you can:

•    Access the beach area by moving towards the camera
•    To obtain Minikit docks and building through the right hand gate spend 8 Bricks
•    To obtain a bar and a hut through the left hand gate spend 12 Bricks
After completing the Story mode there is still a lot more to do if you wish to complete the game 100%. By going through the level select areas again in Free Play mode, you will find each and every Minikit and compass items along with hitting each level’s True Pirate quota. These things are important as they help to earn Gold Brick. In total there are 84 Gold Bricks are available throughout the entire 20 levels:
•    As 1 Brick per level completed , by completing  each of the five levels on all four movie maps in the Story mode you get 20 Gold Bricks
•    By finding all 10 Minikits in each level you get total of 24 Gold Bricks, getting 1 brick after each movie’s Minikit dock.
•    By finding all the eight compass items in every level you get 20 Gold Bricks
•    As 1 Brick each level, you get total of 20 Gold Bricks from achieving the True Pirate quota.
After getting all 84 Gold Bricks, you now have access to a new special fifth area of the Port:
The Ride
After you collected all 84 Gold Bricks go through the left hand gate in the Port and there you find some gold buildable Lego pieces near the cannons. Open the golden gate nearby by building the structure out of those pieces and enter into The Ride.
You commence The Ride as Jack and Angelica in the Story mode. You can have characters or purchase Red Hats if still required by collecting tons of studs and clinging to what you can. Once you have taken down all the enemies you will require to confront Barbossa. The fight is pretty much simple, simply attack him as he draws near and then wait for him to retreat. After you have taken all the six of his hearts, the gate will unlock, hop into the boat by hitting the character button and continue.
Carry on to the next room; confront Maccus and Hadras along with some other enemies. After that you will face Davy Jones who will be more aggressive than barbossa. Once you have taken Davy Jones down another gate will open leading you to the final room. Hop into your boat again and keep moving.

The last room will lead you back to the Fountain of Youth. There you will face quite a few enemies before facing two distinct characters. Defeating random pirates and taking on Gunner and Quartermaster, you will find yourself facing Blackbeard. Just like Davy Jones Blackbeard will be aggressive and will not flee between the combos. Taken him down by six quick hits, hit the character button and jump into your boat.
By now you have beaten the level and as a reward you get 85th and the last Gold Brick. This helps you to visit The Ride in Free Play mode just in case if you are planning on to visit it with different character.
Ten custom characters can be created through the left hand gate in the Port. Using the Barrel Switch raise the bridge to the hut and move on to the second floor inside. Choose any of the characters and then use the character select screen to select them later.

The greater the level of faith placed in Amaterasu by the game’s human beings, the greater her powers. Faith is fuelled by restoring color to the land and satisfying the desire of the people, though quite how this actually plays out is a mystery at this time. In fact, short of the button icons on the top right hand corner of the screen reminiscent of titles such as Beyond Good & Evil, much of Okami remains shrouded in secrecy. Okami deserves attention for its unique visual style, rapidly becoming a trademark of Clover Studio – just look at Viewtiful Joe 1 and 2 for further examples.

Like Armored Core and Armored Core 2, you are given a trial mission to see if you are talented enough to join the mercenary group dubbed Global Cortex. New features within Armored Core 3 include consorts (additional allies that can be obtained to assist you in a mission), detachable weapons (thereby lessening your total weight and increasing speed), and a new Core classification; Exceed Orbit (EO) which sacrifices the power of Overboost and allows you to deploy a built-in, autonomous weapon on your Core.

GAMEPLAY HINTS

Get any enemy

Buy a chaingun, then stand in one place and fire. You should kill the enemy very quickly.

Equip the fastest leg part (petal) and the machine gun with 1000 ammunition. In the battle arena, strafe around your opponents until they run out of ammunition. This takes time, but it works. You can also equip the best generator you can. Do not worry about AP, as they will not hit you that often.

To defeat literally anyone in the Arena (even Exile), equip the following parts and go to the reservoir. Immediately turn left and go as quickly as possible to the platforms sticking out of the reservoir wall. Try to use over-boost as much as possible. First, boost up to the lowest one, second from right, and from there boost to the next one, to the right. Once you land on that platform, turn on your extensions and blast away. If you are fighting Ace, he might land on your platform and shoot you or stand there and recharge his energy. He will probably fly up again and go out of bounds by flying too high. The recommended parts are as follows.
Seth Kursel.

….

full here

These downloadable games include three action titles, two musical titles, a racing title and a shooter, suiting every gamer’s tastes. If you own a PSP, you’ll be able to access the new content with the aid of a Wi-Fi connection or through your PC connected via USB. Keep in mind that the new titles will be shorter than the usual UMD games, but we’ve seen blockbusters ranking high in game reviews, although they only took up 200MB of storage space.

US gamers might get a surprise for Christmas, as the PC compatible version of the PSN will become active this winter. Care to guess what those 7 titles are? I’m hoping for Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep demo, or a brand new Ridge Racer, although I won’t be surprised to see NFS ProStreet surfacing on the PSP this winter. Sony’s finally doing something to catch up with the Xbox Live and the Wii’s similar service, but as long as there’s no daily update and the lag’s omnipresent, the PSN will still be number 2… or even 3.

Seems that producers have abandoned the PS3 for now, as more and more PSP titles are getting ready to surface, confirming the success of the Slim version. Where would Sony be right now without its treasured portable gaming device? Let’s just hope that the profit made through the Slim/Lite PSP sales makes up for the losses caused by the gigantic PlayStation 3.

Source: softpedia.com

It’s official: GrimGrimoire has been dated for Europe. Koei today announced that the co-developed title by RPG specialists, Nippon Ichi and Vanillaware, will offer a spellbinding blend of sorcery and time travel, when it lunches across Europe, on September 28th, for the PlayStation 2. The publisher has revealed a bunch of details on the game too. Here they
are below:

GrimGrimoire follows a young girl called Lillet Blan on her first few days at a prestigious yet mystical magic school, says Koei’s description for the game. Having awoken on the fifth day to find everyone at the school has mysteriously vanished, she then finds herself returned right back to the first day of the term with her memories intact. Now she has an opportunity to relive the past five days all over again and discover just what happened to the school’s inhabitants and maybe prevent this terrible tragedy from happening all over again.

But the game will only allow the most gifted young magicians to attend Wizardry schools and The Tower of the Silver Star. The latter is the most prestigious of the lot. This is where Lillet’s adventure takes place and where she will have to use all of her cunning and magical prowess to overcome the obstacles that stand between her and the savior of her entire school.

A willing army of elves and fairy units will help Lillet get to the bottom of just what happened on that fateful day, battling their way to the answers of this mystery. With enough experience Lillet has the ability to summon demons and dragons just like the ultimate sorcerer and head of the Wizardry School, Gammel Dore.

“We are very pleased to continue our commitment to bringing the very best Japanese RPGs and strategy titles to European gamers with one of 2007’s most intriguing strategic adventures. Just when people might be thinking they’ll never have a chance to visit a school of wizardry ever again GrimGrimoire arrives right on cue to offer gamers a magical world of sorcery, strategy and a mysterious tale that players will be itching to get to the bottom of.”, said Will Curley, Sales Manager for KOEI Ltd.

Remember: GrimGrimoire, co-developed by RPG specialists, Nippon Ichi and Vanillaware and published by Koei, launches across Europe on September 28, for Sony’s PS2. Until then, stay close for updates.
Source: softpedia.com

In case no one broke it to you, “The Bourne Ultimatum,” starring Matt Damon, grossed $69.3 million in its first weekend, delivering the biggest August opening ever, according to Nz.entertainment.yahoo.com. Wikipedia says something about $70.2 million, but given that the numbers are pretty close, I think it’s safe to say that it’s almost record breaking. Whenever this happens with a movie, game developers become restless and want to do a game based on that movie (naturally). No one seems to be “rushing” into this one though…

Except Vivendi Games that is… But as I said, they’re not rushing into doing the movie adaptation, but actually a game going by almost the same name, with a totally
different plot. According to the previously mentioned website, “…the one that Vivendi Games has up its sleeve for a mid-2008 release on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 is no ‘movie game,’ its developers insist.”

What’s even stranger is that a sort of a “trend” might have been set in this direction, and according to the same site, it was the publisher of “John Woo Presents Stranglehold” that said the same thing first. By the way, that one launches August 20. So developers don’t like sticking to the movie’s storyline, plot and characters. That’s really funny! No really, it is. You’d think that a video game adaptation would be so much easier to come up with because the story is there, the characters are there and all the developers have to do is write their code.

However, Emmanuel Valdez, chief creative officer at High Moon Studios, Vivendi’s San Diego-based internal developer, which is building the game titled “The Bourne Conspiracy,” assures that’s “not at all” the case: “Games for next-generation consoles take longer than movies to make — two years and sometimes longer,” Valdez says. “We knew we didn’t have enough time to build a quality ‘Ultimatum’ game and come out with it at the same time as the movie. So we decided to do things differently, something new.”

But not all that was in the movie is lost in the development process. According to the same piece, “Matt Wolf, a creative consultant to the game hired by Ludlum Entertainment, arranged for Tony Gilroy, the screenwriter for all three “Bourne” movies, to flesh out the saga.” He has to ensure that the rules of the “Bourne universe” are to be found within the gameplay experience.

“For example, we needed to impress on the game developers that Jason Bourne isn’t a gun-slinging maniac,” Wolf says. “Part of my job was not just to guard the borders and say no; it was to come up with some creative solutions and support the process.”

As for Matt Tieger, the game’s lead designer, he “recalls that the High Moon team had two principles that became the basis for the game’s creation,” the article reads, thus giving gamers an early insight to what the game’s main character will be like:

“The first was that Bourne isn’t Gucci,” he says. “Meaning that he isn’t the type of spy who carries a lot of stuff with him . . . He pretty much weaponizes his environment. The second really important principal was the fact that Bourne always has a target, an objective. Meaning he’s not the type of character who goes wandering around an open-ended world.”

Great stuff! So this game launches in mid 2008, huh? PS3 and Xbox 360 they say… Pretty exciting, what can I say?
Source: softpedia.com

LucasArts caused a bit of a stir last E3 with a series of innovative tech demos showing off new gaming technology the company was developing for next-generation games based on LucasFilm’s most popular properties–properties such as, just maybe, Star Wars. Almost a year later, we’ve finally gotten an early look at the first Star Wars game for the Xbox 360 and PS3, subtitled The Force Unleashed. The game will make extensive use of those systems LucasArts showed off last year, which will give diehard Star Wars fans a chance to play around with some deliciously over-the-top Force powers in a previously unseen period of the franchise’s timeline.

The coolest part of the E3 demo showed off a new system that will give non-player characters a sense of self-preservation and the means to act accordingly based on their situation. For example, a character who is knocked off a ledge could intelligently grab onto the ledge with one or both hands rather than blindly plummet to his doom. This sort of intelligence will greatly benefit the legions of hapless troops you’ll face in The Force Unleashed, since you’ll have a whole arsenal of telekinetic Force powers (not to mention your trusty lightsaber) to use against them in battle. If you’ve seen the leaked concept footage that hit the Internet not long ago, you’ll have a pretty good idea of the sorts of explosive moves you’ll be able to pull off in the final game.

While a game that lets you cut loose with a bunch of nearly unstoppable Force powers might sound like it could sell itself, The Force Unleashed will also explain your access to these powers with a storyline that will fit in with the six movies of the series. The game is set in the time period betweens Episodes III and IV, during which the Empire scoured countless star systems to exterminate the last remaining Jedi and finalize its hold over the galaxy. You’ll play as an as-yet-unnamed Force-adept character toiling secretly under the auspices of none other than Darth Vader to seek out and destroy the Jedi stragglers who could threaten the Empire’s power.

LucasArts isn’t revealing too many specific story details yet, but we gleaned what we could from the presentation we saw. We had to get especially nerdy and ask how Darth Vader could take on an apprentice when he is himself the Sith apprentice to Emperor Palpatine. While your character is plenty evil-looking and wields a red lightsaber, company reps were quick to point out that he isn’t a Sith at all. In fact, concept art shows the character wearing a sort of shackle on his wrist that Vader apparently uses to control him, so from the sound of it, there will be some ambiguity regarding your true motivations over the course of the game. You’ll even have some control over the appearance of your character, possibly extending to the color of your lightsaber, though again, LucasArts isn’t talking hard details about this yet. Reps did confirm the absence of a specific light-side-or-dark-side meter that measures the morality of your actions, a la Knights of the Old Republic.

Star Wars is a character-driven franchise at its core, and The Force Unleashed will give you an assortment of new and old personalities as it spins its yarn. Darth Vader and the Emperor are two confirmed familiar faces that will show up in the game, but we’d expect there will be more in the final product. In fact, we do know of one more: Shaak Ti, the female Jedi who was killed in a Revenge of the Sith scene that ended up on the cutting room floor. Apparently deleted scenes are deleted for a reason, though, as official Star Wars canon states Shaak Ti is alive and will act as one of your marks in the game.

Your Jedi targets will typically serve as the bosses for the respective levels they appear in, and we learned about a couple of new ones during our demo: General Kota, an aging Jedi commander with a samurai-looking white ‘do, and Maris, the female Jedi seen in the game’s concept art wielding a pair of lightsaber tonfas. Some of the game’s new characters will be on your side, though, such as the lithe, blonde Imperial pilot Juno Eclipse seen in previous concept art, and a new unnamed droid who looks more than a little like C-3PO and will act as the comic relief to your character’s rather serious mission. Lastly, you could say the ships of Star Wars are characters in themselves, and you’ll have a unique new one, the Rogue Shadow, to convey you from one mission to the next. The ship is said to be a bit larger than the Millennium Falcon and will act as a gameplay-relevant home base similar to the ship used in KOTOR–though again, we didn’t find out any specifics of what you’ll be able to do inside the ship.

Star Wars’ diverse and colorful environments have provided almost as much personality to the franchise as its characters, and The Force Unleashed will feature a good mix of those as well. You’ll visit locales from the films like Kashyyyk, the wookiee homeworld which you’ll see devolve into an Imperial stronghold over the course of the game. Then there’s Felucia, the planet with the giant mushrooms featured briefly in Episode III. We saw concept art of the indigenous Felucians, who look like some sort of fungal bipeds with suckers for hands. Another level will be Raxis Prime, a junk planet from the extended universe, and LucasArts says its massive piles of scrap metal will serve as the perfect “Force playground.” As you’d expect, some new areas will be designed for the game as well, such as a very Imperial-looking TIE fighter construction facility.

Finally, we got to see some sample gameplay from an extremely early version of the game, set inside the TIE fighter shipyard. This level tasked the player with seeking out and destroying General Kota, who was holed up somewhere in the facility. This involved the player (who was certainly not us) ripping his way through waves of stormtroopers and regular uniformed guards with his red lightsaber and Force powers. We asked why Darth Vader’s errand boy would be killing a bunch of Imperial troops in the service of the Empire, and were told that since you’re a secret agent, you can’t leave anyone behind to talk about what happened. But since the troops were shouting taunts at the player indicating they knew why he was there and that he wouldn’t be allowed to reach Kota, we have to wonder what else is going on with the storyline here.

We didn’t need to grasp the plot to get a load of the moves being performed onscreen, though. The final game will give you Force powers in four basic categories: grip (which lets you telekinetically pick up objects or enemies), push (which should be self-explanatory), lightning (ditto), and repulse (a 360-degree Force push all around you). You’ll start the game with basic versions of these powers in your arsenal, and they’ll level up through usage to become more powerful. Of course, you’ll also be able to use your trusty lightsaber if you wish, but the LucasArts rep playing through the demo seemed to enjoy the explosive Force powers quite a bit more.

LucasArts’ design goal with The Force Unleashed is basically to give you a bunch of Force-driven tools and then allow you to attack a given scenario however you wish. In one instance, the player was taking on a number of troops firing at him from a catwalk, so he used the grip power to pick up a large crate and fling it into the catwalk’s supports, causing it to rip from the ceiling and drop the enemies to their doom. If you enjoy the lightsaber, you can use the Force to fling it from afar. We saw one instance where the player sent his saber hurtling at an enemy and impaled him before quickly summoning the blade back to his grasp. Finally, at the end of the demo, we were shown how you could conceivably re-create the last shot of last year’s concept footage by flinging a stormtrooper into an incoming TIE fighter.

The Force Unleashed is currently in a very early stage of development, so many of the final visual effects and gameplay systems are still missing right now. Primarily, we were hoping to see the materials simulation system that will, for instance, cause a metal pipe to dent inward or a pane of glass to shatter when you fling an enemy into it. But the other basic components of LucasArts’ ambitious design seem to be falling into place, and we’re hoping the internal development team can bring them all together to achieve the impressive gameplay we saw in that CG footage last year. The Force Unleashed was originally slated to hit stores this November, but the game’s release date was just recently pushed back to early 2008, so it’s comforting that the publisher is hopefully giving the team as much time as it needs to get the game right.
Source: gamespot.com