Monthly Archives: September 2009

Microsoft has announced that Ninety-Nine Nights 2 will be published by Konami via the Xbox 360 Media Briefing 2009 in Tokyo.

Feelplus are developing the title, which does not have a release date as of yet.

There are, however, some screens for it posted over on Kotaku.

Go have a look.

Apparently, the two teams working on Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and Metal Gear Solid: Rising “are not really good friends”, according Hideo Kojima.

Speaking during GamesCom, Kojima told GamePro that the reason is because the Rising team has access to more money and higher-end technology and hardware specs.

“That’s the one reason why they are not good friends,” said Kojima. “If you could imagine the PSP team looking at the Rising team, they have all the money and specs. It’s interesting for me to see the team members act in this way.

“This was never before because it was always just one small team. Now we are much bigger.”

Interesting, eh?

More through the link.

During the latest tech column for Develop, Black Rock Studio’s David Jefferies suggests Microsoft has dropped the requirement that all Xbox 360 games feature 1280×720 resolution.

In the article, Jefferies chats about the “merits of screen resolution and anti-aliasing”, stating that both are “hard to achieve simultaneously without unrealistic GPU demands.”

“We are making a trade-off and saying that the screen resolution is more important to us than the quality of the anti-aliasing,” said Jefferies.

“This isn’t necessarily an entirely voluntary move because, until recently, Microsoft had a TCR insisting that games run at 1280×720 – providing you weren’t one of the lucky ones like Halo, who got it waived and ran at 1152×640, that is.”

Jefferies says the common resolution in most homes is 1920×768, but most televisions deliver a 1366×768 image; therefore, that is why MS recently stopped requiring 1280×720 leaving developers “free to make the trade-off between resolution and image quality as we see fit.”

More through the link.

Turn 10′s Dan Greenawalt has chatted a bit about what sorts of games the developer would make should it deviate away from racing.

Speaking with Joystiq, Greenawalt states that while the teams likes other games, for the time being, cars are where it’s at for ‘em.

“You know, we’ve actually looked at quite a few things. This team’s got a ton of passion for real cars and we’ve also got a ton of passion for games,” he said. “I can’t seem to stop playing Arkham Asylum right now. And a lot of us lost ourselves in Fallout 3 before that. Obviously we’re a studio of huge gamers; we also love cars.

“I think in truth, if we were going to deviate from kind of real-world license racing genre, I think at that point the sky is the limit on what we would do. Would we go towards a more open-world game? Would we go towards an action game? I don’t know but I think in a lot of ways if we deviate from our core passion – which is the licensed cars that we see in our parking lots and we drove as kids and we want to drive – once we go away from that I think we just become passionate gamers and high caliber developers and we’d want to look at making just a different kind of genre entirely.

“I’m not saying that’s actually what we’ve been planning. Right now we’ve been shipping this game and we’ll look into what we’ll do next. But the truth is, there’s been no investigation along those lines.”

More through the link.

Namco Bandai has announced that it will use the Namco Sounds label to release re-mastered tracks from its classic games via iTunes.

Right now, Pac-Man, SoulCalibur Suite: The Resonance of Souls and Swords and Xevious are available with new tracks showing up on the second and fourth Wednesday of every month.

Check your regional iTunes Store for pricing and availability.

Via Kotaku.

SCEA has announced the Limited Edition Gran Turismo PSP Entertainment Pack.

The pack features an exclusive PSN voucher for a white Chevrolet Corvette ZR1, a color not available in the game and only offered in this hardware package. It also includes a Mystic Silver PSP-3000 system, Gran Turismo on UMD, PSN movie voucher (title to be announced), a 2GB Memory Stick PRO Duo, and a music voucher good for 10 downloadable songs from Sony Music Pass.

The stand-alone version of Gran Turismo will be available on UMD and as a digital download on the PSN October 1.

We’re checking to see if Europe gets the same deal.

Full press release through the break.

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Nothing says DiRT 2 like tattoos, breasts, and guitar riffs, apparently.

That is what Codemasters is using to promote the racer, at any rate, via a Flash game called Dirty Tats where you draw tattoos on a lady’s cleavage.

Durty taht more like, or at least that is what we came up with after about 30 minutes of playing. We aren’t really that creative either.

Hit this link to play for yourself.

Some LittleBigPlanet PSP screens are posted over on D’Toid and some over on Eurogamer France too.

Both links show basically the same thing.

Game is out later this year for the handheld, and it looks rather cute.

Go have a look.

Creative Assembly has announced that it will release a patch for Empire: Total War in late September.

Update 1.4 will improve the AI’s combat behavior and diplomatic decisions as well as the usual bug fixes, and other patchy stuff.

If you play, you may want to read up on the changes and fixes over on Shack.

GoG.com has posted a nice deal up on its site, celebrating the one year anniversary of the digital download service.

Right now, when you purchase certain games from the sale list, you will get one free. That is two full games for $5.99. How can you beat that?

Participating games include Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout Tactics, Kingpin: Life of Crime, Earthworm Jim I & II, and loads of others.

The full list can be found here.

Warner Bros has confirmed that Scribblenauts will not be released in the UK until October 9.

The US still gets it on September 15.

Originally, the game was set to release in the UK September 25.

You may or may not have already known this, but we are nothing but informative around here.

Via Eurogamer.

Hidden Path’s Defense Grid: The Awakening is now up on Xbox Live for 800 MS Points ($10/£6.80/€9.60) with 10 hours of story play, 20 unique maps, 4 bonus Borderlands maps, over 100 unlockable challenge modes an loads more goodies.

Yo-Ho-Kablammo is also up for the same price and includes 15 single player challenges, 5 multiplayer maps with access to all of the ships and game modes and all other piratey goodness.

Loads more information can be found over on VideogamesBlogger along with videos of both titles in action.

Quantic Dream’s Guillaume de Fondaumiere has stated that the reason Heavy Rain was delayed into 2010 was so it could get its very own release window.

“The first and most important reason [for the delay] was the fact that I don’t think that such an innovative game like Heavy Rain and a new franchise should be released at the end of the year in the crowded period when everyone’s releasing there games,” de Fondaumiere told CVG.

“A game like Heavy Rain needs space, needs to be explained and shown. At the end of the year, people can’t afford to buy all those games so we wanted to give Heavy Rain the chance to have its own release window, and for us to really talk about it so people really understand it.”

Full thing through the link.

Whoops. SCEE’s just confirmed to VG247 that God of War I and II won’t release for PS3 in Europe this year.

Said a rep in a statement:

“We are currently looking into options to bring God of War I and II to SCEE consumers on PS3; however it will not be possible to release the games this calendar year. We will provide further information in due course.”

The remakes, hitting American PS3s as part of a pre-Christmas God of War Collection, are being handled by Sony Santa Monica. The games are totally remastered, run at 720p and support Trophies.

Unlucky, Europe. Still. Region-free, eh?

Hudson has announced that Bonk and a new Bomberman are heading to PSN, WiiWare and Xbox Live in 2010.

Bomberman Live: Battlefest has Capture the Flag, VIP and Teams modes as well as new power-ups and Xbox Avatar support.

Bonk is a new adventure with co-op and online play.

CVG has screen for both through here.

Full details on each are below the break, courtesy of NeoGAF.

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According to a report over on D’toid, Valve will be showing off the new Special Infected coming to Left 4 Dead 2 at PAX.

This little zombie guy, called The Jockey, will “jump on the backs of Survivors and tear them apart from behind”, while controlling the movements of the Survivor and leading them into areas where zombies are waiting to eat them, caress them, or talk politics.

Or whatever it is zombies do when they get a hold of your character. Regardless, it won’t be nice.

PAX is this weekend, so stick around to find out all about it.

Thanks, D’Toid.

Warner and Screenlife announced today that Scene It? Bright Lights! Big Screen! will arrive on PS3 and Wii for the first time this holiday season along with returning to Xbox 360.

The movie quiz game includes movies released in 2009 and “fan favorite Hollywood hits from the last four decades”. Game improvements include thousands of new questions, new single-player options, party play modes, new puzzles and player avatars, mini-games, a new host, and a simplified gaming interface.

Sounds quizalicious. An exact date was not announced, but should be forthcoming soon.

Press release is below.

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The demo for IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey has reached one million downloads, according to a press mailer from 505 and IC Company.

One million downloads is a lot for a demo, and the staggering number includes bit XBL and PSN downloads combined.

Full press release is posted after the break, and the game is out this month for DS, PS3, PSP and Xbox 360.

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EA has filed a lawsuit against a relative of 30s bank robber John Dillinger, requesting that a judge award permission to use the name Dillinger on guns included in the Godfather games.

The “Dillinger Tommy Gun” was in the original game, and “Modern Dillinger” was implemented in Godfather II.

According to court documents dug up by GamePolitics, Indiana-based Dillinger LLC, the grandson of the gangster’s half-sister, has trademarked Dillinger’s name and likeness, which Indiana law permits for at least 100 years after someone’s death.

Back in July, a lawyer for Dillinger LLC contacted EA and accused it of “violating Dillinger’s right of publicity and infringing upon its trademarks”, subsequently seeking millions of dollars for use of the name.

EA is counter suing for use of the name so it can continue to develop and distribute the titles without paying out the nose.

Back in 2007, just as a matter of reference, Dillinger LLC tried to sue a hotel in Arizona for holing a “Dillinger Days” event for hotel patrons.

More through the link.

Below the break is a video of the 1000-horsepower Bugatti Veyron in action via Forza Motorsport 3, courtesy of Joystiq.

In it, game director Dan Greenawalt talks about how Turn 10 wanted the super sexy beast of a car to be featured in the game, and goes into how the various lovely bits of it are converted for the game.

Greenawalt also talks about damage modeling, but to hell with that part. Just look at the car. That nice, lovely, fantastic car. Even with yellow tape stuff all over it. Wow.

Game’s out in Europe October 23 and in the US on October 27.

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