Monthly Archives: September 2009

Some new shots of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories popped up over on Nintendo Everything today.

If you are a fan of the series, looking forward to the title, or just plain curious – you should go have a look.

It’s out this winter.

Forza 3 reviews are embargod until October 8, Gameswire reports.

A UK media source confirmed this bit of news to the site, so come 8:01am BST/3:01am EST, you should start seeing reviews pop up on the net.

Wonder if it plays as good as it looks. We’ll find out soon enough.

Fumito Ueda has told 1UP that he would like to see ICO and Shadow of the Colossus bundled together for PS3, a la the God of War Collection.

“I always thought they were designed for PS2 and should stay there, he told the site. “But lately, I’ve been thinking it would be nice to provide the games to other platforms to reach more users.”

One can dream, we suppose. Start yelling about it and maybe it will happen.

Via D’toid.

Koei Tecmo has teased a new Hokuto no Ken game at TGS.

Based on the magna/amie, translated in English as Fist of the North Star, it’s a sequel to the PS2 fighter and does not have an announced name as of yet.

However, the teaser site is showing an October 14 date on it, so hopefully more will be revealed then.

Via D’toid.

LittleBigPlanet has some free goodies up for grabs over on Sony’s US site.

As part its promotion for Sony Wonder, voucher codes for owners of Little Big Planet are being handed out for the Norse Mythology pack that includes costumes and level creation DLC.

Head over through the link to get yours now.

Sony head Shuhei Yoshida said during TGS that for now, the motion controller debuted at E3 is being dubbed the Wand Controller.

Until Sony can come up with a proper name, that is.

“There are several candidates for the name of the controller,” said Yoshida. “The SIXAXIS and the DualShock 3 — while great product names — are based on the actual tech. The name we pick for the Wand Controller maybe won’t be so techy.”

Sony is hoping to appeal to both the casual and core market with the controller, therefore Sony is eager to convey the image instead of the tech.

Rumors that Sony already has a Nunchuk peripheral in the design phase are floating about, but Yoshida refused to comment on it. Instead, he said that using the DualShock 3 as a Nunchuk was “the cheapest solution”.

More through Kotaku.

Photo credit: GameWatchImpress.

Details regarding the online multiplayer bit for Splinter Cell: Conviction will be released “very shortly”, the game producer Alexandre Parizeau told CVG.

“We’re going to have multiplayer, but we’re not announcing what we’re doing until a little later,” he said. “It will be announced very shortly, we’re going to talk about soon.”

Previous iterations in the franchise included online hide and seek, which garnered praise from many outlets.

More through CVG.

Alpha Protocol is supposed to be coming out October 27, but rumors flying around the internet state that it has been pushed into spring 2010.

Gamestop has it up for preorder on its site, and down for a June 1, 2010 release. Amazon Canada is showing June 30, and yet Amazon US is still showing October 27.

So who’s right, we’re wondering.

We’ll send a mail out to Obsidian and SEGA and see if either get back.

Thanks, BigDownload.

SOE has sent out a survey to Planetside players saying it intends to release another game based on the MMO shooter IP.

And here’s what it says:

We plan to expand the PlanetSide® universe with another game and we need your help with the design. After all, who knows the game better than you, our customers, the people who actually play it! Don’t worry about the original PlanetSide, it isn’t going anywhere.

We want to hear your opinion and to do so we have put together a short survey. The information you provide will play a critical role into helping guide the development and direction of the next hit Massively Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter.

Hit RPS to see grown men getting far too excited.

Kenichiro Imaizmu, producer of the Metal Gear Solid series at Kojima Productions, has revealed that Hideo Kojima had tried to build his own controller for Metal Gear Solid 4.

“We tried running electric shock waves, install a pulse reader … we also tried to build a controller that’s receptive to the strength of the [player's] grip,” he said. “We tried a lot, even a transforming controller.”

Sounds a bit painful, that shocking bit.

More over on Joystiq.

Ubisoft has suggested that the Xbox 360 version of Splinter Cell: Conviction will take full advantage of the console’s strengths.

“There’s going to be a really strong partnership with Microsoft,” producer, Alexandre Parizeau told CVG. “Obviously we’ll do everything that we can do to make sure that the experience is indebted with whatever the Xbox has to offer.

“I want to make sure that when the game hits the shelves the disc will ‘meld’ with your Xbox 360 – it’s meant for the Xbox 360 and it will show.

“We’ve been working with Microsoft for a while now. We’ve been working with their engineers – we’ve had super good feedback from them on all sorts of different things. It’s been a really good partnership with them.

“They’re backing us up. There’s no question that they’re supporting the game to its fullest.”

Full thing through the link.

Thanks, The_Villa.

Rock Band 2 received a title update earlier today on Xbox 360, which added support to wireless mics, especially the LIPS mics from Microsoft.

Hammer-ons and pull-offs were fixed, background downloading for music store purchases was added and “Audition Mode” was added as well, so that Rock Band Network users can test their created tracks.

Harmonix’s Sean Baptiste explained in the Rock Band forums that the update for PS3 is undergoing certification and will be implemented soon.

Via Joystiq.

During today’s TGS Dead Rising 2 event, Capcom producer Keiji Inafune gave a damning appraisal of the state of the Japanese games trade based on the country’s offerings in Tokyo this week.

“Personally when I looked around [at] all the different games at the TGS floor,”he stated, “I said ‘Man, Japan is over. We’re done. Our game industry is finished.’”

However, he said that Capcom’s “kick ass” Japanese games were all good.

Seems word on the showroom floor doesn’t differ in opinion, as many attendees, according to D’toid, have expressed the same feelings as Inafune.

More through the link.

Fumito Ueda has elaborated a bit more on Torico, the creature in The Last Guardian, and Eurogamer was lucky enough to be the site he explained it to, plus get some screens out of the deal.

Turns out, Ueda wanted the animal to be both cute and fit in well with the game’s design.

“When we came up with this animal, we wanted to make an attractive and cute kind of character. We also created this design to match up with and comply with the game design itself,” he said. “So that’s how we decided on the size, the quality of the character and its physical capabilities – it was about fitting with the game design.

“We ended up having this animal which was much closer in style to the cat, but we also had some other options – a dog-type of cat and also a camel-type character.”

Since you can’t control Torico directly, you use food or objects to get the animal to so what’s necessary. Ueda explained, that these are thrown “to a place where you wouldn’t be able to go in normal circumstances.”

Ueda also said that the team is hoping for a simultaneous release in both Europe and Japan.

More through the link.

Volition made good on yesterday’s promise and has revealed the third bit of DLC for Red Faction: Guerrilla, and its called the “Smasher Pack”.

Available October 1 for PS3 and Xbox 360, it has 8 new maps for multiplayer mode Wrecking Crew, and a new “Behemoth” mode allowing players to switch out the usual weapons for Walkers.

Each of the three main Walkers from the single-player campaign will now be available for use in Behemoth mode.

It will be priced at 400 MS Points on Live and $4.99 on PSN.

There is a Volition montage video of the crew playing it over on the official site.

Ubisoft has released another video for Assassin’s Creed II, this one straight from TGS.

CVG has it here.

Revenge never looked so damn good.

Go watch.

Japanese sales for PS3 have stabilized in despite a slight eight percent drop to 51,055 with the only console to outsell PS3 this week being DSi with sales of 66,073, compared to the DS Lite which came to 13,555.

Wii sales were down to 16,698 compared to 17,568 last week, PSP sales spiked to 21,073 from 18,375, while Xbox 360 sales fell to 4,965 this week compared to last week’s 7,568.

Six title debuts took the software charts with Tales of Vesperia sitting at number three with 216,593 copies moved, and the top two spots being held once again by Pokemon Soul Silver and Pokemon Heart Gold – combined sales exceeded 440,000.

The full Media Create Japanese hardware and software charts for September 15-21 are after the break, courtesy of GI.biz.

More »

Nintendo has released its weekly bit of Wii and DSi content, and should you have either console, here is what you’ll get.

Wii:

• You, Me & The Cubes (1,000 Wii Points)
• Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 2 (1000 Wii Points)
• R-Type (500 Wii Points)
• Gameloft’s Sexy Poker (500 Wii Points)

For DSi there’s Yummy Yummy Cooking Jam (500 DSi Points), which challenges you to “cook for vampires, extraterrestrials, mafia thugs and Vikings, preparing everything from hot dogs to burritos before they storm out of your restaurant in a huff.”

Goodness. What a list, there.

Thanks, CVG.

Microsoft’s corporate vice president, Phil Spencer, has told Joystiq that since Lionhead’s such an “innovation studio”, it would not surprise him if Natal was incorporated into Fable 3.

“You know, Lionhead’s been a real innovation studio for us,” said Spencer. “We have the release of Fable 2 episodic this week, where they’re taking Fable 2 and breaking it up into chunks, allowing people to buy the content at their pace. Fable 2, I thought, was a great release, with the orbs they added with Live, adding new functionality to the franchise.

“It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if Natal found its way into future iterations of Fable.”

Knowing Six Gun Pete the way we all do, it would only surprise the public if it didn’t, Phil.

More through the link.

Ubisoft has sent over three screens for Assassin’s Creed II: Discovery.

Head on past the break for a look-see.

It’s out November 17 for DS and DSi.

More »