Monthly Archives: June 2009

Square Enix has put out a seven-minute video from E3 of Final Fantasy XIII.

Eurogamer France has it.

It is in Japanese, but there are subtitles.

Go watch.

Konami announced today that Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots has joined the PS3 Greatest Hits Collection.

On June 16, the game will be made available at retail for the new price of $29.99.

Press release is after the break.

More »

Playlogic has announced that its horror title Obscure: The Aftermath will release on PSP Go this fall alongside the already announced UMD release.

It’s already available for PC, PS2, and Wii.

Press release after the break.
More »

Some new Mafia II screens are posted over on GamersHell, and the group is from the PC version.

Looks like no matter which port you choose, it is a nice looking game.

There are a few in there that were posted a few days ago, but the new ones should make up for anything repetitive.

Game’s out during the first half of 2010.

2K has sent out a fact sheet on BioShock 2 detailing both the single and multiplayer aspects of the upcoming sequel.

Some of this you already know, some of it you may not. We are here to keep you well informed though, so here is the lot of it.

Multiplayer Features:

• Genetically Enhanced Multiplayer – Earn experience points during gameplay to earn access to new Weapons, Plasmids and Tonics that can be used to create hundreds of different combinations, allowing players to develop a unique character that caters to their playing style.

• Experience Rapture’s Civil War– Players will step into the shoes of Rapture citizens and take direct part in the civil war that tore Rapture apart.

• See Rapture Before the Fall – Experience Rapture before it was reclaimed by the ocean and engage in combat over iconic environments in locations such as Kashmir Restaurant and Mercury Suites, all of which have been reworked from the ground up for multiplayer.

• FPS Veterans Add Their Touch to the Multiplayer Experience – Digital Extremes brings more than 10 years of first person shooter experience including development of award-winning entries in the Unreal and Unreal Tournament franchise.

Storyline and single-player mode facts are listed after the break.

More »

Project Natal was demoed at E3 to a few media outlets, and Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo was one of the lucky ones to get hands-on time with the peripheral.

Going into the demonstration, he thought perhaps Project Natal would not be able to read finger movements, support multiple players, would need bright light to work, and and could be “fooled” into allowing players to drive racers one handed.

He was wrong on all accounts, and said that Natal was fun and worked rather well.

Hit the link for the full thing.

OnLive’s Mike McGarvey said previously that the service would not be exhibited E3 this year, and it wasn’t. However, a controlled demo was show at a condo in downtown LA nonetheless.

Joystiq was one of the few invitees and seemed nominally impressed with the service.

A handful of nameless titles were there for the site to muck around with, and each was being streamed from 350 miles away. Other than the FPS that was played seeming a bit sluggish, all seemed to be exactly as promised.

Good. Hopefully the beta promised this summer will give more than just a handful a taste of what’s to come.

Hit the link for more.

Everyone has been talking about Afrika for what seems like ten years now.

Finally leaving Japan this year, the game was on hand at E3 and Kotaku got 20 minutes of play time with it.

If you can get past the comparisons to Pokemon snap, you should get a bit of information out of it. Who hasn’t compared it to Pokemon Snap though?

At any rate, there is nothing there that you didn’t know already.

Regardless, it still looks nice – even if we are a bit tried of seeing zebras all the time.

The doctors over at BioWare confirmed during E3 that the second bit of Mass Effect DLC will get detailed and dated “soon”.

This came straight from Joystiq who asked Ray Muzyka about the long awaited content during the big conference.

Ray told the site he had been playing around with the upcoming DLC in the office before heading off to LA.

Good to hear Ray, now announce it already.

Looks like the 20 or so protesters who stood outside E3 claiming Dante’s Inferno glorified eternal damnation were nothing more than bought-and-paid-for publicity.

That is all really.

Good thing we didn’t take it too seriously.

Associated Press has more if you can be bothered.

Metroid producer Yoshio Sakamoto has confirmed that Other M is not a replacement for Metroid: Dread, as the game is still being kicking around mentally in his head.

IGN had a chance to speak with Sakamoto during the conference, and was asked why Dread popped up on DS lists a while back and disappeared.

“This is quite awhile ago – a few E3s back”. he said. “I can only say right now that this is Other M, it is not Metroid Dread.

“But as a concept the Metroid Dread idea does still exist within my mind so maybe sometime in the future I will be able to bring that to you.”

Good enough.

Hit the link for the rest of the interview.

EA put out a bunch of FIFA 10 shots this morning. Well, they’re more like renders, really. Because that’s what they are. See them after the break.

It’s all formats, release TBA.

More »

Good grief. SCEE just confirmed SingStar Take That, a game that “will have fans and music lovers singing along to classic pop hits and soulful ballads that span the group’s hugely successful career.”

There’s no set list. Just as well.

It’s for PS3 and PS2 “later this year”.

More »

Peter Molyneux’s told Edge that his new role as the European creative director of Microsoft Games Studios doesn’t mean he’s going to be ordering people about.

“Microsoft came to me and said, ‘It would be incredibly helpful to have someone such as yourself to creatively guide – and I want to stress that – it’s a creative guidance role,” he said, talking at E3 this week.

“I’m not going to go into studios and start designing their games. It’s just using my experience to help people through the development process.”

Molyneux’s new job was confirmed in LA this week, a move the Lionhead boss described as “very exciting”.

There’s a full interview through there.

E3 was awesome. But not for Acti Blizz boss Bobby Kotick. He wanted some hardware price-cutting, damn it.

“I was disappointed not to see any sort of aggressive price-cutting,” the exec told Bloomberg.

“Of all the things that the hardware companies need to be doing right now, it’s recognizing the difficulties of the economy and pricing their hardware appropriately.”

Sony boss Kaz Hirai shrugged it off.

“We’re very happy with the price point that we have,” he said. “We will move when we think it’s appropriate at some point in time.”

Germany. Hit the link for more.

Project Natal project director Alex Kipman revealed to Eurogamer that there will be “hardcore, triple-A” games for the Microsoft’s motion cam.

“We’ll have games that are specifically designed to work only with Natal – not just arcadey games, but real, hardcore, triple-A titles,” said Kipman.

“Then you’ll have some games that are essentially a hybrid – games that work both with the controller and with Natal.

“Why is that interesting? Think about a first-person shooter where I’m using the controller but I’m doing facial tracking by just moving around and looking round corners.”

Kipman also hinted at co-op play -one person holding the controller, the other, using the camera: “Or you could have a hardcore gamer like me playing a game with a controller, while a non-hardcore person sitting next to me enjoys the experience by playing with Natal,” he explained.

“I could be having my Halo experience with the controller and the friend next to me, who’s not a hardcore gamer, could be throwing grenades or driving the Warthog or doing any number of things with Natal.”

Full thing through the link.

No Rare at E3. Why? The UK dev’s too busy making games that make you jump around your living room like an idiot.

“Rare is intimately involved with Project Natal in a number of different dimensions,” Xbox boss Shane Kim told Kotaku at the show this week.

“They’re doing an awful lot of work, even outside the traditional game space, I would say.

“Unfortunately I can’t go into a lot of detail about that. Rare is alive and well and really having a broader impact on the entire Xbox world than just doing the games they traditionally have in the past.”

More through there. Banjo cock games, please Rare.

EG.de’s posted a video of PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe running on PSP Go, and very nice it is, too.

New weapons, levels, and stuff. Take a look.

Nintendo US corporate affairs boss Denise Kaigler has told GameSetWatch that “blog” coverage doesn’t effect the company’s strategy, and it rather plays to a long-term plan.

“We all read the blogs – everyone does,” Kaigler said. “If you’re asking if what we read on the blogs has an absolute impact on our strategy, I guess the simple answer is that our strategy isn’t done right at that moment… our strategy is long-term.

“Our strategy has always been to expand the gaming universe.”

But: “We need core gamers. We recognize that and we’ve always known that, though. We announce games when they’re ready to be announced. I’m glad you described the overall tone of the press conference as being balanced, because that’s what our strategy is.”

Nintendo certainly played to the “core” at E3 this week, with two Mario Wii games and a new Metroid title.

Read the full interview through the link.

Nintendo’s decided to turn off user-generated uploads and replay data for Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

“As of June 30th, 2009, the current service that accepts user-generated snapshots, stage designs, and replay data will no longer be available,” said the game’s official site.

“Please note, however, that we will continue to distribute such data after that date.”

The title launched last year.

Thanks, Kotaku.