Magazines always ship late to me once there's something in 'em I want to read. Word has hit the Internet that a new preview of GTA: Chinatown wars has revealed that the game contains more lines of source code than GTA: San Andreas for the PS2, and required a development team twice the size of the ones that created GTA: Vice City and GTA: Liberty City Stories for the PSP. The story's source is the February 2009 issue of EDGE magazine, which of course has not shipped to me yet.

A few other GTA: Chinatown Wars details, allegedly from the mag:

  • GTA IV's satellite navigation system
  • Buy weapons from your PDA
  • Ability to replay missions
  • Throw grenades with the touch screen
  • Fire weapons with the A button (yes!)
  • A touchscreen mini-game for... paying bridge tolls? 

Oh man, you guys have no idea how long I've been sitting on art and screens and trailers and who-knows-what else for the Wii version of Klonoa that was announced for Japan... I think over the summer. Well, the new Nintendo Power issue was doing a preview round-up for 2009, and what should be sitting there with four-page feature coverage but Klonoa! Yes!

While I know Klonoa primarily because I liked using him in Namco x Capcom (his sidekick was a gun-toting dingo or something!), his game was one of the tiny handful of really good platformers made for the original PlayStation system. The Wii remake is going to keep the same 2.5D gameplay, but with graphics that are immensely prettier and a few "new" bits and bobs like customization options that will only make a difference to the twelve people who played it the first time around.

Klonoa is going to support a range of control schemes, including the Remote by itself, the Classic Controller, and the GameCube Controller. The North American release is also getting a set of exclusive motion-based controls that, let's face it, are probably going to suck. Still, who cares? We're getting Klonoa!

Well, that was unexpected. I'm flipping through the latest EGM after the roomie checks the mail, and I'm reading through their blowout preview of Square-Enix's upcoming titles. Most of it is typical stuff, but the preview blurb for the DS's Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days is amazingly negative. Check this out:

An ambitious multiplayer take on Kingdom Hearts, the oddly named 358/2 Days wasn't nearly as impressive as Birth by Sleep. Square-Enix may simply be asking too much of the humble DS hardware, and the lack of an analog controller hurts, too. Worse, rather than making enemies clever and challenging for four players to take down, the developers simply bumped up their hit points. There's hope for this one, but it definitely needs work.

Ice burn.

I was pretty skeptical when I first covered the Dead Rising Wii port, and I still sort of am. It turns out that Nintendo Power's article about it in the September issue has some promising info that might change my mind. A little aside in the write-up that otherwise covers information from the press release mentions that the developer's goal for the final version of the game is to have 100 zombies onscreen at once. It would be pretty rad, and a huge improvement over existing screens, if Capcom pulls this off.

The Nintendo Power article also mentions new weapons exclusive to the Wii version of the game, and new uses for old weapons that weren't possible in the 360 version. Of course, some weapons are gone, but producer Minoru Nakai claims it'll just be the "weapons that are used in the same way" like the 2x4 and Lead Pipe-- basically one will remain, and other similar ones will go. Likewise, the article promises new blender combinations that yield new powers. So there will be some good reasons for a fan of the original to play the Wii version, if you can stomach the downgraded graphics.

Dead Rising: Chop Til You Drop screens on GamePro.com

More articles about Dead Rising: Chop Til You Drop

Most of my job here at OMG Nintendo is just reading the vast dredge of Nintendo-related news on the net so you don't have to. I find the links I think are best, post 'em here, and call it a day. Of course, there's still some gaming goodness to be found in print, so I'm also going to try to read as many game mags of interest as I can to let you know whether or not they're worth you time. My first mags for this purpose have shown up this week, so let's get started, shall we? Our first subject is NIntendo Power, January 2008 issue.