Village Gamer

Vancouver – New from the Ubisoft Vancouver crew is Pure Fùtbol™, an entirely new sports brand which will be available worldwide in May 2010.

Pure Fùtbol™ is a new and unique vision of soccer video games, emphasizing the intense, physical and spectacular aspects of the sport. The over-the-shoulder camera and visceral audio dynamically react to the context of the match, placing the gamer in the heart of the five-a-side soccer action, as opposed to the feeling of watching a TV broadcast.

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Pure Fùtbol™ will include 230 elite players, 17 international teams, and 17 legendary players. Gamers will have the opportunity to create their own customized athlete who can progress through the campaign mode to ultimately test themselves against the world’s best players in the final tournament. Up to four people can play multiplayer locally and 1vs1 matches are supported online, along with the inclusion of leaderboards that allow players to match up to one another and celebrate the pure competitive nature of soccer.

Montreal – Coming from Ubisoft Montreal this holiday season will be Shaun White Skateboarding, a video game in development with dual-sport professional athlete and two-time Olympic gold medalist, Shaun White.

As the first skateboarding game in the best-selling Shaun White video game franchise, Shaun White Skateboarding will provide an innovative twist and fresh take on the skateboarding and action-sports genre.

“I can’t describe how excited I am about the skateboard game,” said Shaun White. “We’ve been working on it for a while now and it’s ready to melt minds.”

The first athlete to win both gold medals in skateboarding and snowboarding at the Summer and Winter X Games, Shaun White brings a unique perspective to development of video games.

“As we’ve just seen at the Olympics, Shaun is a one-of-kind action sports athlete,” said Olivier Ernst, General Manager at Ubisoft Canada. “Shaun’s enthusiasm for skateboarding shines through in this truly unique game.”

Vancouver – Electronic Arts has announced two new partnerships involving local studios. First, EA announced that it has inked an exclusive deal with Klei Entertainment to bring the studio’s provocative new game Shank to Xbox LIVE® Arcade, PlayStation®Network and PC this summer. Featuring a unique art style inspired by graphic novels and golden age comics, Shank blends the intensity of classic 2D side-scrolling action games with a gripping and mature storyline. The cinematic brawler is a finalist for “Excellence in Visual Art” at this year’s Independent Games Festival and will be featured at the IGF Pavilion during the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco next week.

“Our mission at EA Partners is to work with the best talent across the game industry, and we are thrilled to extend our expertise to the leading creative developers in downloadable indie games,” said Jamil Moledina, Outreach Director, Business Development at EA Partners. “The team at Klei Entertainment is among the best in the world at developing fun and engaging titles for digital distribution platforms, and Shank is an amazing experience.”

“As an independent development studio, we always focus on creating great, authentic experiences for players. Working with EA Partners expands our distribution and allows us to bring Shank to a much wider audience,” said Jamie Cheng, CEO of Klei Entertainment. “They have been a fantastic partner and their understanding of the space is incredibly exciting.”

Taking place in a stylized, modern-Western setting, Shank tells a classic betrayal story directed through a sophisticated cinematic lens, with addictive action gameplay found in classic 2D side-scrolling games.

EA’s second announced deal today is another exclusive publishing deal, this time with Hothead Games and their newest title DeathSpank, which will be coming to Xbox LIVE® Arcade and PlayStation®Network in 2010. Developed under the vision of The Secret of Monkey Island creator and industry icon Ron Gilbert, DeathSpank blends a story filled with Gilbert’s unique humor and wit with classic and addictive action RPG gameplay. Read the rest of this entry »