Monthly Archives: July 2009

Microsoft’s just confirmed via Twitter that the first British 1 vs 100 show will take place tonight at 7.30pm BST.

We’re getting reader reports that the game’s downloading to dashboards as we type, and you now apparently have the option to set a reminder for tonight’s launch.

Thanks, BraveArse.

Eurogamer.de’s reporting that almost 30,000 Germans have now signed a petition seeking to stop the banning of both the development and sale of violent games in the country.

Here’s what they’re putting their name to. Translation supplied to VG247 by EG.de:

The German Bundestag should decide against the decision of the interior minister conference from the 5th of June, that aims for a [banning] of action computer games.

—-

As an adult citizen and a person eligible to vote, I beg your firmly…

- to erase the irritating and discriminating term of “killerspiele” [killer game] from political discussion.
- to strengthen the trust of the public in existing national youth protection mechanics.
- to improve and warrant the execution of existing laws, that ensure kids and the youth only get access to videogames and computer games rating according the USK.
- to support parents and educationally responsible persons in the advancement of media competence.
- to promote the computer games and videogames industry in Germany and especially the training of these promising professions.

A ban on the production and distribution of “killer games” in Germany is looking very real, with the country’s 16 Interior Ministers now asking the Bundestag to put the move into effect before elections on September 27.

The Develop Conference takes place in Brighton, UK next week, so we thought we’d use it as an excuse to kick off our podcast. Listen to the first episode after the break.

We talk through what to expect from the show in terms of news, the developer names making the trip down south, and Martin’s plans to draw flaming cars driven by skeletons for our podcast art. He’s so excitable. Like a little rabbit.

We’re going to be putting these live every Friday from now on. We may even have guests in future. It’s a brave new world.

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Starlet developer 5th Cell has never thought of puzzler Scribblenauts as a DS exclusive, technical director Marius Fahlbusch has told VG247, and has confessed that the puzzler could migrate between platforms.

“The concept would definitely work on other platforms as well and we’ve seen gamers from very different backgrounds pick it up and enjoy it equally,” said Fahlbusch.

He added: “We’ve seen both kinds of gamers instantly taking to the game, the casual gamer that played a few games before as well as hardcore ones that play nothing but the latest titles on PS3 and X360.

“But we never limited ourselves to the DS as platform in our heads and we’ll see what the future holds.”

Scribblenauts, a puzzle game in which gamers type in the names of objects to make them appear for play, was the shock story of E3 this year, taking away the official Best Original Game award.

Get our full chat with Marius after the break. Scribblenauts is out later this year.

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Ubisoft’s Maxime Béland doesn’t want any cut-scenes in Splinter Cell Conviction at all. Like, he really doesn’t want them.

“My dream – and I hope we can pull it off – is to have the whole game with no cuts,” the developer told IGN.

“One fucking seamless experience with no stops. You saw it – what’s cool is that it hides the loading scenes; we play full-HD movies in full screen and you don’t really notice that we’re loading in the background.”

He will do it.

“We will do it – it’s just that sometimes, when you use the mirror to look under the door for example, we do a cut. But no! Right now, we weren’t able to do it for E3, but the idea is that next time Sam uses his mirror, he’s going to pull out his mirror, the camera’s going to shift down to the mirror and you’re there the whole time.”

It’s out in October for PC and 360. No cut-scenes allowed.

GT’s published the reveal of Uncharted 2′s Ice Cave level, as promised. Hand on heart, this game just looks amazing. Watch it here.

The new section focuses more on puzzles and exploration that shooting. Naughty Dog boss Evan Wells is interviewed there, explaining what’s going on.

In case you missed it this morning, Sony’s also released the game’s first cinematic and some new screens.

It’s out later this year, exclusively for PS3.

After the break. Again, there’s a ton of stuff in there about the game’s plot, so be warned. Again, watch it anyway – the quality’s phenomenal.

Uncharted 2′s out later this year, exclusively for PS3.

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Holy shit. We’re saying nothing. Get it after the break. Looks absolutely amazing.

Beware: there are spoilers in here. Watch it anyway.

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Arkane Studios – best known for Dark Messiah of Might and Magic and Arx Fatalis – has confirmed it’s the latest outfit to get to work on BioShock 2.

The Lyon, France-based developer is assisting in level design. In a similar vein, the company recently assisted in creating multiplayer maps for Call of Duty: World at War.

“Under the direction and leadership of 2K Marin, Arkane is assisting in the creation of levels that embody the aesthetic and gameplay ideals that make BioShock such a unique and exciting experience,” said 2K Marin producer Alyssa Finley.

Four developers are now working on the sequel, namely 2K Marin, 2K Australia, Digital Extremes and Arkane Studios.

Here it comes. Over 2 million people have now pre-ordered Dragon Quest IX, which goes on sales for DS in Japan this week, meaning we’re almost certainly about to see a huge DSi-DS Lite hardware sales spike. Both machines started to pick up last week.

Which is great. Because if we’d had to write up another week of upabitdownabit Japanese hardware figures we may have started self-harming.

Last week’s chart here. Data below for the week ending July 5.

• DSi – 46,855
• PSP – 32,849
• Wii – 24,971
• PS3 – 11,196
• DS Lite – 7,507
• Xbox 360 – 5,876
• PS2 – 3,734

Gamerbytes is reporting that Battlefield 1943′s leaderboards now have more than 80,000 names on them, which is propbably why the game’s been groaning under the strain. This is just for the XBLA version.

If you’ve been following the EA feeds on Twitter, you’ll know how hard the publisher’s been working to meet demand.

EA and DICE said in a statement yesterday that they’re working “non-stop” to ease lag and get more servers online.

Props to the DICE massive. This has to be a benchmark moment for a console-based, download-only game.

MekTek.net is going to be giving away MechWarrior 4 and all its expansions for free “soon”. Which is nice.

“This free release of MechWarrior 4 commemorates BattleTech’s 25th anniversary as well as MekTek’s 10th anniversary, and will allow BattleTech fans a chance to re-discover MechWarrior, as well as help us bring in a new army of players who are discovering MechWarrior and the BattleTech universe for the first time, completely for free,” said the site.

Can’t say fairer than that. Just bear in mind the game originally came out in 2001. We’ll let you know when you can grab it. Thanks, Kotaku.

According to this ESRB listing for Warner’s Scribblenauts, you can type in “vomit” and a “grey lump” appears on the DS screen. Classy.

If you missed the hullabaloo surrounding DS’s Scribblenauts at E3, the listing explains the premise clearly:

This is a puzzle game in which players navigate a series of traps, puzzles, and enemies to collect stars scattered throughout the colorful levels. Players have the ability to summon different objects by writing/typing in the word (e.g., bike, spaceship, lion) and watching it come to life. If multiple words are entered in a sequence, different whimsical scenarios can be triggered: a bicycle can be used to jump over a baby; a bulldozer can clear away a shark; and cabbage can be fed to dinosaurs.

You’re going to be seeing a lot more on this in the very near future. It’s out later this year.

Via NeoGAF and Joystiq.

Game Watch has posted up some brand new screens of Uncharted 2. They’re mixed in with a bunch of old stuff – see if you can weedle out the fresh pics. It’s Friday. You haven’t got anything better to do.

The game’s down for an autumn launch this year, although there was a bit of confusion this week about whether or not it’s out in October. Which may well mean it is. That page actually says “early fall 2009″.

Look and see.

Apparently, Activision has offered up an explanation as to why it chose to – once again – attach Call of Duty to Modern Warfare 2.

“Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare 2 is the direct sequel to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare,” a spokesperson told Kotaku. “We have focused our attention on Modern Warfare in order to most effectively communicate the fact that this is the first true sequel in the Call of Duty series.

“Infinity Ward, the original creators of the Call of Duty franchise, has said from the beginning Modern Warfare 2 resides in the Call of Duty universe. This is reflected in the title’s package.”

There. End of Story. Please. For the love of God and the public’s sanity.

BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk has said that because of the tool set included with the PC version of Dragon Age: Origins, he would like to see user created content from it carried over onto consoles.

“We’ve a lot of DLC plans,” he told CVG (Via Joystiq). “There’s a slight difference on PC and console, because on PC we provide full user tools that let you modify and create your own levels and stories. You can browse a lot of that user content from within the game.

“On the console side, it’s obviously not really feasible for us to provide the toolset, but we are actually looking at ways to potentially share the content created on the PC on consoles. There aren’t really any huge technical hurdles to that.

“We are creating a lot of downloadable content that’ll be on offer shortly after release. We already have a team working on it, because the core content of the game is pretty much done.”

On the other side of the coin, Kotaku noticed during its demo of the game, that at the end of a video that was shown were logos for Twitter and Facebook.

When asked about this, senior product manager David Silverman stated that people should think of Dragon Age as a “massively single-player role-playing game.”

Apparently, EA and BioWare plan to find ways to connect communities of players and allow them to be aware of each other’s in-game feats.

Hopefully this is the last bit of Dragon Age news for a few days.

No offense, Greg and Ray.

BioWare’s Greg Zeschuk has told Videogamer that since the company could not expand on characters in Baldur’s Gate, Dragon Age: Origins will be it’s spiritual successor.

So, that’s why they keep saying that.

“The things we miss more than anything else are some of the characters we created,” he said. “It’s frustrating – like Minsc and some of the other characters we built over the years – not being able to continue to stem that is a bit frustrating. Though, to be fair, we feel like we closed the series.

“There are a lot of video games that – like the original Wasteland – never had a sequel, but there are a lot of games that never actually end. Whatever happens, they’re left hanging and fans are like, ah I wish I’d finished it.

“But because we were able to finish the sequence of games in Baldur’s Gate: Throne of Bhaal… it’s funny, we were satisfied that we were able to deliver that entire arc. Go ‘there it is and that’s the story of Baldur’s Gate’. We feel like we finished our work at that time.

“We don’t have regrets.”

More through the link.

Blizzard community manager Bashiok has said that mobility will be equal for all classes in Diablo III.

Apparently, one of the biggest concerns was that mobility would be a bit unfair like in its predecessor, Diablo II.

“We definitely want to avoid as best as possible a single class being far and away better than all others at something (such as mobility) and thus used exclusively for specific tasks,” he wrote.

“As long as there is choice and variety in the game there’s going to be one solution that gains a general consensus as being the best at “X”. The hope and the intent is to make the difference between the best and second best, third best, etc. as close to imperceptible as possible so that you can use what ever class/character you want, what ever build you want, and not feel that you’re far and away below the abilities of something else. That’s balance in choice.

“We’re taking a close look at what those specific mobility issues were in Diablo II and could be in Diablo III, and yes we’re certainly trying to be a bit smarter about planning for it. You specifically mention the witch doctor. With the way he plays and feels a big warp or jump around skill just doesn’t really seem right for him, but he may have a trick or two up his sleeve…”

Thanks, Hellforge.

Koei has announced that Warriors Orochi 2 will land on PSP August 25.

It will include three new game modes: Dream, VS and Survival, as well as “Tag Team”-style matches that pit fighters in head-to-head arena combat.

There are 96 playable characters from the Dynasty and Samurai Warriors series including Gyuki and Dodomeki. New playable characters not found in the console release include San Zang and Benkei.

Features exclusive to the PSP include: 2-Player VS mode plus Co-op play in Story, Free and Dream modes, 12 new scenarios in Dream mode, and a Japanese and English voice option.

More information is available in the press release posted below.

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The US PSN update this week includes Battlefield 1943, Spec Ops: Stealth Patrol, and MotorStorm Pacific Rift Adrenaline Expansion among others.

There’s also demos for Battlefield 1943 and Ghostbusters, as well as the usual Dynasty Warriors, Guitar Hero and Rock Band content.

PSP users can download Ultimate Board Game Collection and Samurai Warriors: State of War.

If you’re American, or just curious, head on over to the US PS Blog for the rest.