That's right, that infamous bug has been fixed, the one that stopped your branch rating from going up. And many other bugs have been squished too. Celebrate!
There's new stuff too: Another hero, for example, and new office items. New neighborhoods have opened up. A new scheduler UI. Double Fine has them all listed, so go read.
And A Pirate! Yar! has returned? What the hell?
Source: Double Fine
Over the last four or five years, a number of Indiana Jones fans have been diligently gathering the material necessary to compile a deleted scenes page for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull over at TheRaider.net. The commendable efforts of this noble, tireless, obscenely attractive (full disclosure: I contributed) band of scalawags are finally brought to bear today recently.
While it's not like these scenes would have made for a dramatically better movie (that would have required going with the Darabont screenplay that Spielberg and Lucas disagreed on, in my opinion), they are still fascinating to read about. For example, were you aware that in early cuts of the film, Ray Winstone actually had lines of dialog, Indy had occasion to use his whip, and Mutt got bitten by a piranha? Read all about these and more cut sequences, complete with a lot of rare production stills, right here.
Source: TheRaider.net
The Cook-chase crew are back -- for one episode at least! We'd like to do more but have to talk to the Disney lawyers first. In the meantime, we got together to talk about Disney and Star Wars. Listen below, and, as ever, please get in touch with messages / interventions by commenting on this news post, or e-mailing us at podcast [at] mixnmojo.com
Download or subscribe on iTunes. Thanks to Zaarin for editing this together.
Just that. Vote for your favorite character! Right there on the right!
As for your favorite version of LeChuck...
| Most awesome version of LeChuck? | ||
|---|---|---|
| Zombie | 31 | |
| Ghost | 8 | |
| Demon | 7 | |
| God | 3 | |
| Human | 1 | |
| Total votes | 50 | |
2am last night, the Australians running Eight and a Half Bit interviewed Cave man Ronzo "Ron" Gilbert.. Listen and you may even find out what he thinks about Lost! iTunes users can go here.
Source: Eight and a Half Bit
File this under very unconfirmed, but The Wrap has been right before:
JJ Abrams -- you know him from Felicity -- is set to direct the next Star Wars movie. Aaaand... That's it. Will he do a better job than Old Man George's last three attempts? (Yes.)
Source: The Wrap
Not that it's the only delight to avail yourself of in this new interview with Ron Gilbert slung by Digital Spy as The Cave expands its release today:
"But the thing about it that really started to intrigue me was talking to people who played Maniac Mansion, and it really became clear to me that people had their favorite characters, their dream team for going into the mansion.
They love Bernard, they love Razor, so they just always play with those two characters. I wanted to capture a little bit of that with this.
But to make sure that the characters, unlike some of the characters in Maniac Mansion - like Jack, I mean, who plays Maniac Mansion with Jack... nobody, right? - so it was kind of about making each of the characters very, very different, each of them having a very ,very different ability to allow them to solve puzzles differently from the other characters and everyone having their own story, their own themed areas of the cave.
So I wanted to re-look at that, learning what I'd learned from Maniac Mansion."
Source: Digital Spy
Update 2 by Jennifer: It looks like The Cave made it's January 23rd release window on Steam afterall. So, it's totally out now.
Original post: Word has it you can find The Cave on Wii U in the US. PS3? Well, that's supposed to happen too. The rest of us will have to wait until tomorrow.Meanwhile, the reviews have started to come in. Kotaku tells us we should play the game, while IGN is restrainedly positive about it. Digital Spy, meanwhile, just says meh. Mojo? We will review it... Someday.
So good, OK, or meh? Run and download The Cave as soon as you can to find out.
Update by Jennifer: It's out now on Xbox Live Arcade too. The Steam release has been pushed to tomorrow, the 24th of January.Source: OzzieMonkey
It seems that BioWare has finally taken Mojo's jokes excellent coverage to heart. In the new expansion pack named Rise of the Hutt Cartel, which we already covered briefly, BioWare has created a new planet named "Makeb" for players to visit. At the same time, BioWare is also going to be adding same-gender relationships to the game, but they will (for now) be confined to just this planet.
There has been some negative reaction to restricting same-gender relationships to one planet. Kotaku has referred to this as "pay-to-gay". They also posted about a response to BioWare's announcement: (Warning: NSFW) The Hunt for the Gay Planet. (Double Warning: May be more fun than The Old Republic, or at least less repetitive)
Oh, and BioWare revealed some details about the upcoming 1.7 update.
Source: Ars Technica
Update by Mr We Just Say Manager: Ronzo "Ron" Gilbert has confirmed a January 23rd release date for XBLA and Steam -- PSN and Wii U will see The Cave one day earlier. (That's the 22nd.) And, it will also hit Mac and Linux! What?!
Remember when Mojo almost shut down because we didn't have any new games to write about?
Original post: According to MyXboxLive, The Cave has appeared on the Xbox Live Marketplace with a release date of January 23rd! How much space will it use? Exactly 1010.70 MB according to Greg Rice at Double Fine!
Source: MyXboxLive
Not like you exactly needed a crystal ball to predict that it was going to eventually happen, but Disney has officially scheduled a release date for a fifth Pirates of the Caribbean picture.
Despite drafts being completed by series regular Terry Rossio (who in the case of the first four films wrote with his regular collaborator Ted Elliot), the movie recently got a new screenwriter: Jeff Nathanson, who wrote and co-wrote such scripts as Speed 2, the second and third Rush Hour films, Spielberg's Catch Me if You Can and The Terminal, the recent Tower Heist, and one of the ten billion unused incarnations of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (residue of which scored him a story credit). Other than that, the only thing known is Johnny Depp's participation.
What specious homages to the Monkey Island series will this next installment evince that promise to inspire a thread with at least five (5) posts in it? We'll just have to wait until July 10th, 2015.
Source: Deadline
You may know that publisher THQ filed for bankruptcy last month, and it seems that their individual assets are soon to go up for auction.
Among the studios that have requested THQ's bankruptcy filings, implying an interest in the Company of Heroes publisher's properties, is none other than Double Fine Productions. This helpful paragraph from Gamespot's coverage of this development explains why you probably don't need to get too intrigued:
A Double Fine representative told GameSpot, "Double Fine owns the full intellectual property rights to Costume Quest and Stacking. However, THQ retains certain limited distribution rights that have not expired yet, and we are exploring our options with respect to those."
For those of you who are affected by the stuttering and freezing problems in the retail version of The Walking Dead for Xbox 360, an official solution has been given in Telltale's support forums.
The problem only affects Xbox 360 4GB models not fitted with an internal hard disk drive, playing the disc-based (retail) version of the game.
According to Telltale team member Matt P:
"Acquiring and installing an internal hard disk drive compatible with your Xbox360 4GB console will resolve this issue (a hard disk drive connected via your Xbox 360’s USB port will NOT provide a remedy).
If you are unable to acquire and install an internal hard disk drive for your Xbox 360 4GB, we will supply you with codes to download season one (5 episodes) of The Walking Dead from the Xbox LIVE Marketplace at no charge as outlined in the associated Claim Redemption Form [Click here to download].
Upon confirmation of proof of purchase, Xbox LIVE Marketplace codes and instructions for their use will be sent to you at no charge.
We value our customers and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused."
Source: Steam
UK magazine GamesTM has interviewed Dan Connors where he says that Telltale is looking to start working on a new, original IP within the next two years, probably with a partner. He also reveals that Fables (based on the comic three of our readers have read) is coming next, with no mention of King's Quest. Does this mean they've ditched it? Did they realize that making a game whose fans' idea of fun is getting stuck, solving insane puzzles, and dying a million times would be no fun at all? Stay tuned!
Source: The Capel Tingler!
In an interesting interview with Venture Beat, Telltale's senior vice president of publishing Steve Allison expanded on this quote by Dan Connors:
"Coming from LucasArts, we always felt we could do a great Star Wars story game," Telltale chief executive officer Dan Connors told Red Bull U.K. in an interview. "We also love the idea of building out a deeper story to a great game franchise — something like Half Life Stories or Halo Stories."
"[Dan Connors was] speaking more to our goal of wanting to take on a major gaming franchise someday. [We want] to build a narrative game series that supports another franchise - as we passionately believe [our game] would not compete with or cannibalize [Halo 4 or the next Half-Life.]"
Allison believes that a Telltale adventure game based on a major gaming or movie franchise would only boost player investment in the series. Especially since the developer’s games are so different from what most of these properties are best known for.
"Will we do this? Yes, we believe we will some time very soon..."
I'd love to see Telltale work with Disney on a Star Wars game, though that's in part because the relationship might bode well for future games using classic LucasArts IP. Or something based on The Muppets.
Source: Venture Beat
Two major interviews with Double Fine have recently been published, both of them with designer JP LeBreton and writer Chris Remo. One is a sprawling Gamasutra feature about Amnesia Fortnight and an insightful examination of the studio's strategies in general, and the other is a competitively long interview about The Cave at Adventure Gamers. In both cases, Remo is a former writer of the publication interviewing him, which is not exactly average trivia. That's why I'm calling it above-average trivia.
You guys realize that The Cave comes out this month, right?
One of the great things about being a natural contrarian is that I get all the Willow coverage to myself.
On March 12th, Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox join forces to bring you "Willow: 25th Anniversary Edition" on Blu-ray. You probably recall Ron Howard's 1988 fantasy film as the thoroughly okay attempt by George Lucas to hatch a new franchise, this one more Tolkien than Flash Gordon. The grander plans fell through when the box office returns weren't good for much more than covering costs, but the movie remains a cult favorite, and is arguably a property Lucasfilm should have continued with a sequel anyway (a possibility which the great Warwick Davis to this day heartbreakingly refuses to rule out).
Here's the thing about Willow: it's got a whole bunch of intriguing deleted scenes that fans have only been able to experience via script pages and novelizations, and it looks like this release will finally bring some of them to light. Based on the trailer above, we'll get to see the fabled scene where Willow gets attacked by an animatronic shark-boy in a storm (its omission leaving Willow inexplicably wet at one point in the final cut) and more material depicting the frozen citizens of the kingdom of Tir Asleen. You probably don't know what the hell I'm talking about because I'm talking about Willow, so let's re-frame this news in a way that everyone can appreciate: skull-masked Pat Roach in high definition.
Source: High-Def Digest
The apocalypse has come and gone, and like the cockroaches, Mojo survived. What better way to celeberate this than by reading our review of the year we've put behind us? Click here!
