After the recent success of LEGO-themed games (and with LEGO Indy and LEGO Batman just around the corner) I couldn’t help but get slightly excited about hearing of an upcoming ZOIDS game (For XBox360 no less)!

Imagine it! Goodie blue ZOIDS marching against the unstoppable forces of the evil red ZOIDS with the battery powered really big and impressive ones that your mates owned (and you were really jealous of because you only had the slightly smaller wind up versions) leading the charge. Assembling new ZOIDS from the wreckage on the battlefield as you go, little gold and silver plastic people at the helm… crickey, it’d be completely awesome.

Picture the crushing disappointment as I discover that not only was the amazingly simple plot mechanic of good blue ZOIDS vs. evil red ZOIDS a feature of the European toys only, there’s been a whole new range of ZOIDS in the meantime and it’s all gone a bit gung-ho we’re trying to be serious-ey and therefore, a bit rubbish.

It’s all “The Guylos Empire” (rubbish name) versus “The Republic of Helic” (also rubbish) now.

This is GORE, The Lord Protector of the Blue ZOIDS. He’s not in the new game. Instead we have the likes of…

…D-Bison of the Helic Republic (rubbish name). Look, it’s all weathered and rusty like it’s an actual machine or something instead of a little plastic toy. Boo!

Oh okay, it’s not really Obi-Wan Kenobi it’s Jon ‘Log’ Blyth of ‘The Law of the Playground’ book fame but look, there’s a definite Ewan McGregor vibe going on with his hair, beard, and the brown it-could-almost-be-a-cloak t-shirt…

I have a baaaad feeling about this.

So while we know that the Interweb has literally been throttled by GTA related fever these last few weeks, I’d make room for this little number regardless of which side of the GTA love/hate fence you sit on. Cos it’s funny and that.

Watch the video here!

It’s called “The Lord of the Rings: Conquest”, and it’s basically a new Star Wars: Battlefront game with all the Star Wars-y bits taken out, orcs and elves thrown in, and the name changed. Sound exciting? No? That’s probably because I’ve made it sound a bit naff whereas IGN made it sound really really cool.

Woo! Looks nice!

Apparently you’ll be able to choose to play any battle from the books and films (as well as some completely made up ones) and fight as pretty much any role. So be an elf archer defending Helm’s Deep, for example. Sweet, eh? Still no? Oh heck, I’ll just quote a bit of what Eurogamer said instead, and then you can pop over to IGN and read all about it properly.

The best bit about The Lord of the Rings: Conquest is that it lets you be almost everyone from Middle-Earth, including the baddies. You can expect to be Cave-trolls, Oliphaunts, Ents, Balrogs, and even the Witch King, Saruman and Sauron himself.

There is an entire evil campaign waiting to be unlocked after you finish the good story, and it begins with you as a Ringwraith capturing Frodo and delivering the Ring to Sauron.

You can play both campaigns with up to four friends online or in split-screen, or just hop into eight-player competitive battles.

Oh, and it’s for PC, PS3, and XBox360.

Proper article at IGN.

Can anything better the Cherry Bakewell Tart U.F.O from last round? Is that even possible? Well, this morning we received a new contender from the world of commericial games development.

As Nickenstien (games programmer - I would say ‘extraordinaire’, but that would be a bit of a lie) puts it, “As of this morning, I have on my desk a fantastic organism that can mimic ANYTHING EVER!”.

Oh really? Brave words indeed, sir, brave words. Well, shall we take a look?

It’s a dinosaur!

Hey, wow! That’s actually pretty good! It’s got a little eye and everything.

The money shot!

That’s quite literally the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen! Unfortunately, Nick’s called it, “The Xenomorph Alien from Aliens eating some Chavs” when it’s quite clearly the dinosaur again.

Also a Jester’s hat?

No, see you’re ruining it now. That’s just the dinosaur again but on a different bit of paper. It’s also a boxing kangaroo apparently but I can’t be arsed to upload that picture - just turn your head 90 degrees and imagine a boxing glove drawn on the obligatory background.

Nick concludes, “This astonishing chameleonic life-form was discovered by me today when it was cunningly disguised as a Walkers Sensations Thai Sweet Chilli crisp!”

So, final score? Well, I’m almost certain that the dinosaur pictures were enough to clinch victory… but oh noes! he’s forced the joke too much and ruined it, bringing the final score down to…

7.23/10 - A good score, but not quite good enough.

What a challenge! How do you turn some of the most iconic and well-designed videogame characters of all time into 3D equivalents without compromising the style?

Capcom show us how:

Stylish!

Facial Animation!

Dramatic!

Yep, it all just goes to prove that it’s not the size of the tool it’s how you wield it. All we’ve got here are polygons, normal maps, some textures, and lighting - just like every other PS3 and XBox360 game - but with an added extra pinch of talent. Actually, lots of talent.

Source: Eurogamer

Aaaah… Rick Dangerous - there was a cracking (if frequently horrendously unfair) game. Fire button + Up to shoot, fire button + Down to set a bomb and accidentally blow yourself up while trying to go down a ladder.

But enough of the game, this is all about the character. And whilst he’s been squidged horribly into a square - his shoulders up by his ears and his hat pulled so far down that it rather implies that Rick has literally no forehead, he’s clearly supposed to be a sort of Indiana Jones type. Which would make him ripe for fan art…

But, no. It would appear that the artist behind the sprite, and the artist who drew the box art had rather different ideas about Rick’s character as I think this comparison rather neatly shows:

Box Art on left, Title Screen on right

Er, indeed. You thought you were buying a game with a hunky action hero in it, but when the game loaded you realised that actually it stars a very poorly drawn thug. Not so much Rick Dangerous as Biffa Bacon with a fedora hat on.

Still, if you owned the game on C64 you didn’t get that picture on the title screen, so we can live in denial and pretend it never happened.

Round #15 of our pixel challenge, ColourThis, kicks off today. The rules are simple - you are provided with an outline and all you have to do is colour it, making anything you like out of it. The more creative and original the design the better, and the winner is chosen for the creativity of their entry rather than their pixel skills.

Download this outline, colour it,
and submit your entry in this thread!

The winner of the last round provides the outline and chooses the winner of the next.

We had great entries last round with contributions from many ColourThis first-timers! Ultimately, congratulations go to round #14 winner Nyu001 and his “runny-nosed, tam-o-shantered Scotsman”:

Check out previous winners here!

Join CGEmpire in appreciation for Sam (full name possibly Samuel - we’ll keep you posted on news developments on this one) Taylor (nice sturdy English name)!

Star of VideoJug videos across the Interweb, and professional Researcher (no doubt a tip top researcher, very thorough, climbing up the TV industry career ladder as we speak), Sam Taylor will be featuring on our TV screens just as soon as the Beeb (or perhaps as the new face of Channel4?) snap him up.

In the meantime, we’ll just have to contend ourselves with VideoJug:

Watch Sam remove evidence of grotty porn from his computer!
Watch Sam being tidy!
Watch Sam making a paper CD case!

Found more videos of Sam? Post links in our official Sam Taylor Fan Club thread!

UPDATE: Actual, real, in the flesh, Sam Taylor has deemed the CGEmpire (almost) official Sam Taylor Fan Club actually official! Hooray!

GameRecruiter have announced the first of their 3D artwork contests, the “Battle of the SuperModelers”.

It might sound like something from America’s Next Top Model (Mondays, 9pm, LIVING TV - I definitely do not watch this, okay?), but it’s not. With prizes from the likes of Alienware, Autodesk, Wacom (a Cintiq 12 WX, no less!) and Gnomon Workshop, if you’re a game artist, fancy yourself as “quite good, really”, and are based in the US or Canada, then it’s probably worth a shot.

Game artists are invited to create an original real-time character model of a monster, creature, robot or alien that might be found in a fantasy, sci-fi or horror game and submit their 3D art entry online by Friday, August 15, 2008. The contest Grand Prize Winner and three finalists will receive a combined total $50,000-worth of digital art tools and technology.

Real-Time Art Asset Budget:

10,000 tri-polys for everything: the creature and any minions (sidekick, friends, pets, parasites, etc). Also weapons, and objects, special effects and equipment, etc.

Required Maps:

1 x 2048 Color Map
1 x 2048 Normal Map

Additional Optional Maps:

1 x 2048 Specular Map
1 x 2048 Specular Color Map
1 x 2048 Bump Map

1 x 2048 Reflection Map
1 x 2048 Opacity Map
1 x 2048 Glow map
1 x 2048 Glossiness map

Isn’t it a bit nuts that “real-time” nowadays can mean 10,000 polys with two (and the rest!) 2048 pixel textures applied?!?!? Whatever happened to polygon limits that you could count in your head and teeny tiny little hand-pixelled textures? Bah!

Full contest info and guidelines here!

Eastwest are celebrating their 20th anniversary this year! Many of their titles are hugely popular all over the world, and their products have earned many awards over the years!

Recently they’ve launched their own player/sampler (PLAY) which is 64-bit and they have released 6 different products based on that platform.

One of these products is Stormdrum 2 - The next generation (worth $495), which we’re pleased to announce as the prize for the winner of the 15th CGEmpire Music Competition!

The theme this time is ‘The long Journey Home‘. The contest ends on Sunday 11th of May 23:59 London time. For more information on how to enter, please visit the competition thread in our forums.

For more information, demos, videos and tutorials about SD2 please visit this page.