Concept art from 'The Amazing Spider-Man' video game

Next Summer brings the heavily debated Amazing Spider-Man movie, starring Andrew Garfield and directed by Marc Webb, which means that Summer will also see the release of its inevitable tie-in video game. But what technological monstrosity is depicted in this early concept art from the game?

Placeholder cover art (not final)

Quebec-based Beenox, developer behind the last two Spider-Man games (Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions and Spider-Man: Edge of Time), is working on The Amazing Spider-Man. Activision revealed today the first details about the game: it’s set in the aftermath of the film, and returns to the free-roaming nature of earlier Spider-Man games where the player is able to web-sling their way to anywhere in the city they want to go, at any time. There’s also a new game mechanic that’s being called “Web Rush,” which is supposed to let you execute a whole bunch of new moves.

The new Spidey will face “a variety of criminals” in this new game, according to Activision’s press release, but I can’t figure out what villainous goliath our hero is facing off against in this piece of concept art from Beenox. It certainly isn’t the Lizard — the movie’s villain — or anything related to him. It almost looks like a giant Scorpion, but that would be a significant departure from the comics.

Any guesses?

The Amazing Spider-Man video game is being written by Seamus Kevin Fahey, who’s worked as a staff writer on Syfy’s Battlestar Galactica and Starz’ Spartacus: Gods of the Arena. Below is a tiny teaser for the game’s first trailer, which will debut on Spike’s Video Game Awards this Saturday night.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies launch screen

Activision is bringing Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies to iPhone, iPod, and iPad tomorrow. And by all indications, it’s going to be a blast.

Kotaku brings the full intel, but here’s an abbreviated version. Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies is a brand new, highly polished app based on the Zombies mode from Call of Duty: Black Ops. It was adapted by Ideaworks Game Studio, who built it specifically for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. There are three difficulty settings, a slider for graphics performance (newer devices will support the full effect), and what sounds like a very slick presentation that uses comic book style menus. You can play solo or multiplayer with up to four players, and in an especially cool touch, it even supports voice chat. There’s also a full port of the popular Dead Ops Arcade top-down shooter from the console version of Black Ops, while the primary game utilizes the original game’s “Kino der Toten” map.

The game is expected to retail for $6.99 in the iTunes App Store, and Activision is promising to update it in the future with DLC and additional gaming maps — all for free.

In case you feared that Call of Duty‘s dominance in the tactical shooter marketplace might be diminishing due to the onslaught of Battlefield 3, here’s some news that’s both disturbing and oddly encouraging.

The New York Post is reporting that a group of French thieves besieged two trucks that contained thousands of copies of Modern Warfare 3, making off with more than $1 million. What’s remarkable about the story is that the two trucks weren’t hijacked at the same time; one was about an hour after the other, just this past Saturday. The heists took place in a Paris suburb, with two different methods.

The first robbery was accomplished by a car ramming into the game-carrying truck, forcing them to stop. The robbers brandished knives and threw tear gas at the truck drivers, and stole the truck in the confusion. The second truck was stolen when it came across a vehicle blocking the road, forcing it to stop. Three armed attackers jumped out of the other car, and made the driver hand over the truck at gunpoint. None of the thieves have yet been apprehended.

So why is this encouraging for MW3 fans? Isn’t it obvious? If a group of thieves deemed this game to be big enough of a deal to plan and pull off robberies of this complexity and magnitude, then surely Call of Duty is still king of the hill. Of course, the sales numbers will truly tell the tale. Modern Warfare 3 hits store shelves tonight at midnight.

If these screens are fake, they’re some of the best fakes I’ve ever seen. The game is apparently called Goldeneye 007 Reloaded, according to an Amazon listing, and the leaked screenshots show it to be a very faithful port of the 2010 game — which itself was a from-the-ground-up remake of a hit N64 from 1997.

The Wii game has sold almost 1.3 million copies to date, making it a modest hit, though I think it’s entirely possible those sales numbers are a reflection of the state of Wii gaming than a commentary on the game itself. Either way, PS3 and X360 versions of the game could prove significantly more popular. Then again, this will be the third version of a game that most of the fans who really want to play it, probably already have.

Activision has said that it will be showing off a new James Bond game at Comic-Con this week, and the smart money is on that game being Goldeneye 007 Reloaded. Will you buy it?

Enjoy the screens.

Here it is. The trailer you’ve been waiting for. We’ve got the real deal gameplay footage, baby, and it’s in HD. You’ve never seen a Call of Duty on this big a scale. Seriously, if future games in the series get much bigger than this, it’ll have to be humans vs. aliens for the fate of the whole planet.

Along with the trailer, Activision also announced the official release date for Modern Warfare 3: November 8, 2011.

Mark your calendar.

The trailers don’t show much; they’re mostly audio voiceover files from the game, but hardcore fans will no doubt be excited by them. Each trailer is themed around a major country that you get to visit while playing the game. At around the 18-second mark of each teaser, there’s some wireframe-ish, neon green imagery from the playable maps in the game. (Think MW-meets-The Matrix.) The “France” one is the best one, with its dramatically collapsing building.

Do these teasers get you at all excited for Modern Warfare 3?

It will come as a surprise to no one that Activision is planning a new Call of Duty game for release this November. Their publishing strategy over the last three or four years has been to release a new CoD title every year, thanks to the efforts of two different game studios (Infinity Ward and Treyarch). It probably won’t even surprise you to learn that this year’s game is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. But you will be surprised by the amount of details about the game that have been leaked and posted on Kotaku today.

Kotaku’s report includes loads of character, weapon, and location renders, and full spoilers on the game’s storyline. Don’t worry, I’m not about to spoil it for you here; I don’t roll that way. But I will tell you that it picks up immediately after the cliffhanger ending of Modern Warfare 2, with American forces doing exactly what you’d expect.

Fifteen missions are expected to round out the single player campaign, set in loads of famous real-world locations including New York City, Washington DC, London, Paris, Prague, Moscow, Berlin, Dubai, and more. Kotaku describes these levels as containing “mammoth battles”The multiplayer maps use many of these same locations, with a healthy variety of popular game modes and possibly a few new ones.

Modern Warfare 3 is said to wrap up dangling plot threads from the last two games, while introducing two new characters that may play a big role in future CoD titles.

In the meantime, Activision is expected to make its annual reveal for the new Call of Duty game at E3 next month. Until then, they’re refusing to comment, although Infinity Ward tweeted about the leaks, claiming that “some” of the info in Kotaku’s report is accurate, while other parts have changed during the development process.

The Transformers: Dark of the Moon video game is inching closer to release, and I know past releases in the series haven’t exactly instilled confidence, but still, we have good reason to cling to high hopes for this one.

A new batch of screenshots just came down the pike from Activision and developer High Moon Studios, and I’m willing to admit that I may be alone in this, but I think some of the Transformers in these high-res shots look nearly as good as their movie counterparts. Oh, how I wish we could get a truly killer Transformers game. Talk about wish fulfillment for every man who was a child of the 80s.

Activision and Treyarch have announced the second batch of DLC for Call of Duty: Black Ops, and it’s the fanciful “zombie level” that seem to get made for every Call of Duty game. But this one comes with a pretty cool surprise.

The new content pack, titled Black Ops Escalation, adds several new characters to the game’s playable roster, and you’re going to recognize them all — because they’re all people known for fighting the undead. Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar, headlines this new cast that also includes Robert Englund (Freddy Kruger, A Nightmare on Elm Street), Danny Trejo (the title character from Machete), and Michael Rooker (Merle Dixon, The Walking Dead). Legendary horror writer/director George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead) also appears as himself. Treyarch says Escalation is a tribute to Romero.

Come on, how awesome will it be to blast zombies as Machete, Merle, or Buffy (even though that character never used guns)?

Call of Duty: Black Ops Escalation will be available first on Xbox Live, on May 3rd, before spreading to other platforms.

The new Spider-Man game, Edge of Time, from the makers of last year’s Shattered Dimensions, has got a trailer and some early screenshots that show what it’s going to be like to play the game. I’ve got to say that although the game’s design and superpowers appear awfully similar to what was featured in Shattered Dimensions, there’s some very provocative new stuff in there, particularly in the screenshots.

One shot shows a boss facing down against multiple copies of Amazing Spider-Man, in what one assumes must be some kind of power centered around control of time. A few other shots feature Amazing Spidey interacting directly with his successor — Spider-Man 2099, the game’s other playable character — through some kind of window through time. It actually looks as though while Spider-Man 2099 is facing off against a giant robot, that Amazing Spider-Man, some ninety years prior is interacting with that same robot to impact the fight happening all those years later.

Another shot shows off a new power of Amazing Spidey’s, where he shoots out a pair of huge, horizontal, tornado-like web attacks. (Wouldn’t that use up all of his web fluid?) You’ll see Spider-Man 2099 on another of his free-fall attacks through some kind of futuristic factory, and more. I’m intrigued by what I’m seeing, and eager to see more. How about you?

When time goes all wonky and Peter Parker ends up dead, who you gonna call?

As it turns out, it’s Spider-Man to the rescue. Of… himself. Hm.

Well, two different Spider-Men come to his aid, actually: “classic” Amazing Spider-Man and futuristic Spider-Man 2099. Spider-Man: Edge of Time is Activision’s next Spidey game, and it puts you in the shoes of these two different superheroes in two different times, both trying to save Peter Parker’s life and prevent a catastrophic future (which is somehow connected to Peter’s death). Confused yet?

Don’t be. Activision‘s last game, Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, put you in the spider-booties of not two, but four different Spider-Men — including these two. The studio that created that title, Beenox, is responsible for Edge of Time. By those standards, Edge of Time is actually a simpler affair. Fan-favorite writer Peter David is crafting the story, which is said to be packed with suspense and an always counting-down clock.

You’ll go back and forth between Amazing Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2099, and observe how the changes you make in the modern day affect the world of 2099. Edge of Time is scheduled for release this Fall.

Shattered Dimensions was good fun, if uneven, so here’s hoping Edge of Time improves on the formula. Hey, it’s got to be better than the musical, right?

If anyone can turn in a decent Transformers video game, it’s High Moon Studios. It’s the studio that crafted the fan-favorite Transformers: War for Cybertron game. Thankfully, High Moon has been given free reign to do whatever they want with the game based on the new movie, so they’ve crafted an original storyline that serves as a prequel.

A set of media just released for the new game shows off characters both new and old, but the one that jumped out at me is Laserbeak. This vulture-like Transformer originally debuted as one of the tiny cassette tapes that came with boom box Decepticon Soundwave. In the new movie, Soundwave is back, and gets to be more than just a satellite orbiting Earth, and he’s bringing Laserbeak along for the ride.

The new trailer shows off some other changes as well, including a new paint job for Ratchet (bright green? really?) and some upgraded weaponry for Optimus Prime that seems to include a chainsaw-type device. There’s a new tank character joining the ranks of the Autobots, but I’m not sure who this is. The trailer shows that Megatron is still suffering from the damage he took at the end of the second film, and it even gives us a glimpse of Shockwave, the film’s main baddie.

As a rule, movie tie-in video games are abysmal. Made with too little time and not enough polish, they exist primarily to fleece more money out of the movie-going public, to experience the movie’s story a second time. (Toy Story 3 stands as an exception to this rule, as its game was, by all accounts, rather fantastic.)

The first two Transformers games based on Michael Bay’s movies were just awful. But there may be cause to hope over the tie-in for the Transformers: Dark of the Moon game (I’m still hating that title). What’s the cause for this sudden optimism? Unlike the first two games, which were made by TT Games and Luxoflux respectively, this new one is being made by High Moon Studios — the developer behind last year’s excellent Transformers: War for Cybertron. While not perfect, War for Cybertron showed that High Moon has a real love for these characters and their world, and it got the best reviews of any Transformers game ever.

Now, the odds are against High Moon besting itself with Dark of the Moon, since once again we have a game that’s been given far too short a development life. But the press release sent out today by distributor Activision makes it sound like High Moon is at least trying to make the game worthwhile.

High Moon has created a new gameplay mode for this new game called “Stealth Force,” which represents a hybrid between robot mode and vehicle mode. Why it’s called Stealth Force, I have no idea, because as you can see Bumblebee model it in the trailer above, there’s nothing whatsoever stealthy about it. It looks more like “battle tank” mode to me.

The Dark of the Moon game also has the distinction of introducing robot characters that are new to the Michaelbayverse, including the movie’s big bad, Shockwave. High Moon’s game features a storyline that serves as a prologue to the events in the movie, so at least it’s not just a regurgitation of the film, right?

Do we dare hope for a good game?

You can find out more about the game at transformersgame.com. Here are the game’s first screenshots.

Activision is betting big this coming Christmas on a new convergence video game-slash-toy set called Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure, which brings the popular purple dragon Spyro into a whole new realm. The $70 title comes with a full video game, a “Portal of Power” device, and 30 collectible toy figurines that can interface directly with the game.

The key to the experience is the toys, which are more than just standard action figures. The toys have memory chips inside that allow them to interact with the game on multiple gaming platforms, including handheld devices and major consoles, and even the Internet, remembering achievements and your game history wherever they go. Activision has dubbed the Skylanders toys, which are being manufactured by Activision’s wholly-owned toy company Toys for Bob, “Inter-action figures.”

But lest you think it’s all about the toys, the game itself is getting plenty of high level attention as well. Screenwriters Alek Sokolow & Joel Cohen, who worked on the first Toy Story movie, wrote the game’s story, and prolific film score writer Hans Zimmer (The Dark Knight, Inception) provides the music.

The key to the experience is the personalities and powers of the toy characters, each of which is unique and brings different experiences to the game. The game offers drop-in/drop-out capabilities via the toy characters, of which you can use as many as you like in a single game. Kids can play in co-op with friends, or against their friends in PvP mode.

Specific platforms haven’t been announced yet, but with this much money and marketing muscle being pumped into what’s clearly being positioned as the start of a franchise, I have to assume that Activision is planning a full blitz, with versions of the software available for every conceivable device. Toys R Us is even partnering with Activision to market the game. The game will also get a huge push at the annual International Toy Fair, which is set for February 13-16 in New York.

Activision offloaded a slew of screenshots and images of the toys, which you can check out below. Also, the video above gives you an idea of how the game and toys work. The game’s website is at skylandersgame.com.

Please join me in a moment of silence. Guitar Hero, the pioneering title of the music or “rhythmic gaming” genre, has died.

The plummeting sales of music games is old news, so it should come as no surprise to anyone that Activision has decided to bring both its Guitar Hero and DJ Hero franchises to a definitive end. Announced as part of the company’s periodic earning’s report, the long-running Guitar Hero will have no future titles published, and no more DLC tracks will be made available after those already announced for February. Existing DLC will remain available to purchase — for a while, anyway. A new Guitar Hero title in the series was in the works for later this year, but that title has been scrapped, along with all other future plans.

Activision’s 7 Studios and Freestyle Games — the studios behind Guitar Hero and DJ Hero — have both suffered severe layoffs of at least half their respective staff members. (You gotta feel for those guys that got the pink slip; it’s a sucky time economically to lose your job.)

Activision‘s stated reasons for dissolving the franchise are precisely what you’d expect, as seen in this segment of the company’s earnings report: “We simply cannot make these games profitably based on current economics and demand.”

This news has been a long time coming, but now we’re left to wonder what this will do to the future of music games. Rock Band is still around, but developer Harmonix recently went independent, losing its MTV Games support in a similar cost-cutting measure. Being the only triple-A music game maker on the scene should be beneficial to Harmonix, but the industry is still in a sharp decline. In the immediate future, we haven’t seen the last of Rock Band. Harmonix continues to pump out DLC on a regular basis, and has solid plans for its future, wisely branching out into other types of music games, like Dance Central.

But on the whole, I don’t think the genre is going away for good, though it is certainly scaling way back. With so many game makers jumping ship from costly console game development to the increasingly lucrative iOS/Android and Facebook gaming platforms, I wouldn’t be surprised to see music games take a sharp turn into smaller, “tap here to play” territory, since iOS/Android and Facebook games are so much easier to produce and turn a profit with.

It’s not exactly breaking news that Call of Duty: Black Ops is already a mega-hit. Or that publisher Activision considers the CoD franchise the crowning jewel in its empire. So while CoD founding studio Infinity Ward is still recouping from all of that drama a while back where the company’s two founders were ousted by Activision (Black Ops comes from Treyarch, the studio behind all of the odd-numbered series entries), you can bet your butt that future iterations of the series are already well under way.

But the obvious question becomes: where does Call of Duty go from here? The series has bounced between the World Wars of the early 20th Century, to the covert operations of Modern Warfare, and now back to the heights of the cold war in the 70s. Black Ops developer Treyarch has made it clear that they’re committed to CoD for the long haul, and plan to make lots more games for the series. Infinity Ward is likewise still onboard, even without the brain trust of the duo that invented the franchise. And then there’s newcomer Sledgehammer Games, which was just recently outed as working on a CoD game by a loose-lipped Activision executive.

Gamasutra cites “industry sources” that have them convinced that the next Call of Duty is going to jump timeframes again — and this time to somewhere no CoD has gone before. Sledgehammer’s game — which expected to be the next entry at bat — is said to be set in the future, and feature, “for lack of a better term, space Marines.”

As enticing as this concept sounds — and I’m totally on the bandwagon if they go that way, I think it’s a great idea to keep the franchise fresh — I can’t help wondering what it might be like to play a Call of Duty game that goes further in the other direction. Can you imagine a Civil War-era CoD? A Revolutionary War CoD?

What do you think of the prospect of Call of Duty: Future Warfare? Are you ready for this ultra-realistic (yet highly cinematic) series to take the leap into science fiction?

Follow @FGgamer on Twitter for the latest gaming news.

Now, even Konami’s banner game, Dance Dance Revolution, is being jeopardized, too. Activision has filed papers to trademark the name Dance Hero. The rights for the name will be used for a “computer game software,” “interactive video game programs,” “computer game discs,” “downloadable computer game software,” and other related categories.

Of course, this could also mean nothing. Activision has also trademarked other names like Guitar Villain and Drum Villain but no games were announced bearing these names. But then the recently trademarked DJ Hero name is being rumored to be under development as a turntable-mashup game.