Leading video game developer BioWare, a division of Electronic Arts Inc., has secured a star-studded voiceover cast for its upcoming blockbuster game, Dragon Age: Origins. Featuring Tim Curry, star of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Broadway’s Spamalot, as well as Kate Mulgrew, well-known for her role as Capt. Kathryn Janeway in Star Trek: Voyager“.

Dragon Age: Origins also includes notable cast members Tim Russ (“Star Trek: Voyager,” “Samantha Who?”), Claudia Black (“Stargate SG-1,” “Pitch Black”) and Steve Valentine (“Estate of Panic,” “Crossing Jordan”). Dragon Age: Origins marks BioWare’s return to fantasy, created from the ground up to take players through a dark epic tale filled with violence, lust, and betrayal.

Tim Curry will play the villainous Arl Rendon Howe. Howe is the calculating villain, cultured and charming, with an insatiable lust for power who never hesitates to harm anyone who gets in his way. Kate Mulgrew will lend her vocal flair to Flemeth, a powerful witch who maintains her immortality through the darkest of means, and who plays a pivotal role in the player’s survival. Both roles provide the actors with the opportunity to bring their considerable talents to bear in their portrayal of these characters.

“Dragon Age: Origins has the largest cast of characters of any game BioWare has ever made,” said Mark Darrah, Executive Producer, BioWare. “By working with an incredibly talented cast of actors we are able to bring reality and depth to the characters, their back stories, motivations, and dreams that our talented writers have created for them.”

Yet another bits the dust at EA. In reports today, it was revealed that Will Wright, the creator of Spore, has left Electronic Arts to pursue new projects at Stupid Fun Club, a side project Wright actually started in 2001.

Stupid Fun Club is now evolved in a full fledged entertainment ‘think tank’ focused on developing new IP to deploy across not just video games, but also movies, television, the Internet and even toys. However, EA also invested in Stupid Fun Club and it owns an equal share of the company. The publisher will also have first refusal rights on all video game projects.

“The entertainment industry is moving rapidly into an era of revolutionary change,” said Will Wright. “Stupid Fun Club will explore new possibilities that are emerging from this sublime chaos and create new forms of entertainment on a variety of platforms. In my twelve years at EA, I’ve had the pleasure to work alongside some of the brightest and most talented game developers in the industry and I look forward to working with them again in the near future.”

There is no doubt in our mind that Mass Effect was one of the best titles of 2007, even if many us didn’t get a chance to buy it because of the stupid old guy that runs your local GameStop store, like I did. But, I digress. Anyway, with that said, we recently got official word that Mass Effect 2 is a reality and that we would be getting chance to view it ‘very soon’. And, with that said, it looks like that time has come.

According to GameZine.co.uk, BioWare will present the iterative level design process of Mass Effect 2 at this year’s Game Developer’s Conference, GDC ‘09.

By learning from the mistakes and issues they encountered in the development of Mass Effect, BioWare has made progress in level-creation by maximising quality whilst minimising cost or having to rework sections. This enables them to address problems early in the development cycle and their eager to share their lessons with other developers.

After the PSP version of the hit PS2 game, God of War, video game developer Ready At Dawn reported that it wasn’t going to be making anymore PSP games in the future.

Now, however according to a post on their official website, 2 out of 5 top PSP games sold on Amazon in the US last week were Ready At Dawn games. And right after they reported that, there was a little messages on the bottom of the post saying, “maybe we should reconsider this whole ‘no more PSP games’ thing because we seem to be doing pretty good at it.”

It was report back in June that the company wasn’t going to be making anymore PSP games,  here’s what the company said,  “we’re now officially done with PSP development.”

“Today we sent all out devkits back and seeing all these boxes ready to be picked up definitely marks the end of an era here at Ready at Dawn,” the company continued.

It was once mandatory that game developers check with Sony on there games content in Europe. Now, when speaking at the Casual Connect conference in Kiev, SCEE’s George Bain confirmed that PS2 would now be “effectively an open platform” in Europe. This is thought to be an attempt to encourage regional developers in countries such as India and Russia to make “low-development cost titles and release them in their market”.

George Bain also confirmed that Sony’s entire content approval system has been streamlined into a single global system. Which makes it easier for developers to submit their content online under one website not separated by regions. Therefore, it makes it easier for developers to get their further downloadable content out, after there first one passes through which makes it faster because they don’t have to go through the process again.

We haven’t hear from this game in like a year and now that we have finally received news on the game it’s bad. When speaking to IGN on some important details on the upcoming game, L.A. Noire, Tom Crago, the president of the Game Developers’ Association of Australia, told them that the game “…another year or so to go”. He also mentioned that it “could be the biggest budget videogame in development anywhere in the world. It would certainly… in terms of console titles, be in the top ten… LA Noire is a massive massive project.”

And last, but by no means least, he mentioned that the game is coming to PS3 and 360 – up until now the title has only been confirmed for PS3. We’ll let you know as soon as we can get independent confirmation from either Team Bondi or Rockstar.

When Disney Interactive Studios purchased Climax Development many fans didn’t know what to think, even game developer Jason Avent dreaded a Mikey or Donald racing game, so what were we expected as fans? Well, it was more then what we had hoped for. Instead of some kind of extreme kid racing game, we got a game of pure amazement simply entitled, Pure. This game really does rip books on ATV games as this game ditches the standard dirt adds stunt tracks for a world of vista free fall tracks that can make you scream from the heights.

One of the key things that made this game what it is has to be the games semi-easy control system. This system is very easy to learn from both sides and the controls very from the A button for simple tracks, the B button for more advanced tricks and the Y button for some semi out of control pro-tricks. But, this depends on how high or low you fill out your trick bar by advancing your tricks, like A then B and so on.

The game also has this system called pre-load, which helps you boost up your score in the game. Well, not really because when I was playing the game I really didn’t see any real boost in my trick bar, but it did help me gain crazy air so that we can pull off more crazy tricks gaining us more trick points.

The game has three basic gameplay modes and they are races, sprints, and freestyle, but there, really is not any difference to the game modes other then the laps and time. All these are available online along with a new mode called free-ride, which gives racers a set amount of time to bet a score. Another cool thing in this game happens to bring it to the table is the game graphics system, which according to them uses instance rendering technology, which produces the smallest parts of the games environment in every frame of the game. But, this game still has some bugs. For one thing, I don’t know how I spotted this, but there is a little delay when you hit the water for the water parities to come up.

One coolest thing we found in the game has to be its campaign mode, which is called World Tour which gives you the ability to customize for ride. The game gives you 24 different opinions to change, which are the key parts to any ATV. This is a great thing because you can build your ride for any track making the track easier for you to play. You can also unlock parts for your ATV when you win or compete a mission or track.

Score: A

At E3 when WiiMotionPlus was revealed not alot of game developers where ready for that announcement, but yet still the guys over at Ubisoft Montreuil where still willing to give the fans what they want. Now, almost 2 months later we have news of a release date gap for Ubisoft Montreuil’s upcoming video game, Red Steel 2. The game was originally planed for this winter, but because of the many changes made at E3 by Nintendo, i’m just guesting here, the game could release in that time line.

According to Ubisoft Montreuil, their upcoming game, Red Steel 2, is now planned for a winter 2009 release date, which will be just in time for the holidays. In an interview with GI.biz, Alain Corre stated that the game will be featuring the upcoming feature WiiMotionPlus. So expect to play this game with a new feel by next Christmas.

Today, TransGaming announced an agreement with video game developer BioWare to enable a special edition Jade Empire for the Mac. TransGaming’s digital distribution portal, GameTree Online, will make the title available immediately to the Mac community for purchase via direct download.

“The addition of Jade Empire Special Edition to GameTree Online illustrates the commitment TransGaming and leading developers like BioWare have in serving the Mac gaming community with high quality games,…Our Cider technology allows us to rapidly enable and deploy high quality games and Jade Empire Special Edition is another example of the exceptional calibre of games we are pleased to be delivering to the ever growing Mac gaming community.” -Vikas Gupta, CEO & President of TransGaming.

Bobby Kotick, the CEO of Activision Blizzard was very proud to announced that Call of Duty 6 will be developed by Infinity Ward and will be on track for a 2009 release. If you don’t remember, Infinity Ward was the development studio which was behind the Call of Duty franchise and are the mastermind behind Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare.

While this is great news there are still many question that are left to be answered. What time will Call of Duty 6 be placed in? While there is no idea many are rumored to believe that  in 2009 we may be heading the way of the science fiction universe. So will Call of Duty 6 be held in space with squads and or marines fighting the War On Terror. Stay with us we will keep you informed

Realtime Worlds announced today, that it has raised $50 million USD in Series B funding. Maverick Capital, the renowned investment firm founded by Lee Ainslie, led the new investment round with existing investor New Enterprise Associates and WPP, a world leader in marketing communications services. The Series B investment will support Realtime Worlds’ continued growth and expansion as the company develops new creative properties and brings innovative online gaming experiences to market.

“Securing funding of this size from partners that are leading the financial and marketing communications industries further affirms Realtime Worlds’ position as one of the most creative, respected and successful game development companies in the world,” said David Jones, founder and CEO, Realtime Worlds. “Since our founding, we have been fortunate to have some of the gaming industry’s top creative talent crafting amazing, groundbreaking interactive entertainment products. With this new infusion of capital, Realtime Worlds is poised to deliver new original experiences to gamers around the globe and to push the boundaries of online gaming.”

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