The reason for the delay can be traced to censorship by the SCEE. Jaffe has issued statements that indicate that the integral parts of the story will be unaffected, despite changes the censors made. Most, if not all the cuts made will be to the cut scenes and not the gameplay.
What part of Twisted Metal are you most looking forward to?
Gamers and Star Wars fanatics have long been clamoring for a sequel to Battlefront. And when Battlefront 2 servers were shut down, the outcry became even louder. However, despite numerous rumors, it appeared that the BF3 was dead.
Now, a new rumor has sprung up. Job listings, tweets and resumes have recently popped up and seem to indicate that LucasArts may once again be trying to revitalize their publishing business.
A recent tweet from Spark Unlimited indicated that they may be working on Battlefront 3:
Since we are working on a sequel for a well known sci-fi franchise, all aspects must remain secret.
Spark is looking for a senior combat designer for a 3rd Person Action/Adventure sequel in a high-profile science fiction franchise currently greenlit for full production development for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC markets.
Also, there is a LinkedIn profile from a former senior dev at Spark Unlimited who spent time on an “unannounced third person sword fighting game (well known IP, Xbox 360, PS3).”
Could swords refer to lightsabers?
Another LinkedIn profile from a former member of the studio mentions that, “I have been working for three years on an AAA third person shooter using Unreal Engine and Kynapse AI middleware.”
And finally, we have another tweet that the studio sent out last year:
“Publisher hasn’t stated when or where the announcement will take place. The time and place could be close or far, far away.“
Of course, this is all pretty circumstantial, and could refer to a great deal of Star Wars licensed games. However, it leads one to hope that this will finally be the long awaited 3rd entry in the series.
The Last of Us will be the first game of the newly formed second team at Naughty Dog. However, when that team was formed and coming up with ideas for their first game, the tale of Joel and Ellie wasn’t the first to be suggested. In fact, according to Naughty Dog co-president Evan Wells, the second team decided to throw around ideas for the first Jak and Daxter game for the Playstation 3.
In an interview with Game Informer (the same issue which revealed more details on The Last of Us), Wells comments on the idea of creating a Jak and Daxter game:
“We’d all talked about it in interviews with fans asking, ‘Where’s the next Jak & Daxter?’ I don’t know if this is going to make them happy or sad, but we did explore the idea fairly extensively. Something that we talked about early on was, ‘Lets go back and apply what we’ve learned with the Uncharted games to Jak & Daxter.’ It’s one of the franchises that’s near and dear to us, and, in all honesty, we’d like to somehow honour.”
So, why did the talks and the ideas fail to launch the project? Wells believes that it would not live up to the fan’s expectations:
“Even if we felt like we’re going to give the fans another Jak & Daxter, we felt we weren’t going to give them the game that they wanted. We would end up limiting the direction that the company had this passion for while simultaneously not creating the game that fans wanted. We just realised we were going to just do everybody a disservice. So at that point, the conversations started to move in a new direction.”
Wells, however, revealed that the Uncharted team may decide to develop a new Jak and Daxter game. I would consider this a long shot, however:
“Naughty Dog’s got a long history and I think it’s got a long future, so to say we’ll never go back is kind of crazy. But right now, we’ve got this new IP that we’re definitely going to be supporting. I guess there’s a possibility the Uncharted team could move on to Jak & Daxter. It’s still up in the air, but I wouldn’t think that’s going to happen because I think we’d run into all of the same problems with that team that we did with this team.”
All of this talk about Jak and Daxter leads up to the HD re-release of Jak and Daxter 1, 2 and 3 in the Jak and Daxter Collection, which will be released this week on the Playstation 3. Hopefully all of the Jak and Daxter fans buy the collection to show Naughty Dog that investment in a new adventure will be worth their time.
The latest edition of Game Informer discusses Naughty Dog’s latest project, The Last of Us. In an interview in the magazine, director of the game Bruce Straley has divulged into some of the back story and the two protagonists. He has also confirmed that the game will be taken into the online space. I will warn those who are interested in the game and its story that you are about to encounter spoilers.
In this version of Earth, the human population has been wiped out by a fungus. Joel, the male protagonist, is in his late forties and smuggles guns and drugs between the quarantine zones. As a wish from a “dying friend,” Joel smuggles out fourteen year old Ellie, who lives in a military house within the quarantine zone. Their meeting is where the game begins. The military catches the two trying to escape the zone, so they must escape their presence. Afterwards, they head West. Their relationship during this trip was influenced by movies such as True Grit and Road to Perdition.
Joel and Ellie must work together throughout the game in order to survive. During one sequence, they encounter bandits disguised as survivors. They will need to defend themselves with a mix of melee combat and environmental weapons such as a wooden plank. Health packs will be available, but require time to apply. They will also have the ability to pass weapons to each other.
The reason Naughty Dog went down this direction was to further develop the type of relationship experienced by Nathan Drake and Tenzen in Uncharted 2. During Drake’s visit in Nepal, both Drake and Tenzen worked together to navigate the icy caves of the Himalayas. It will be interesting how an older man and a teen girl will work together as a team and whether the two require that bonding period to be an effective duo.
As mentioned earlier, Bruce Straley revealed that the game will have online functionality:
“We’re going to have some sort of online component. We’re working on a bunch of ideas, but we haven’t nailed anything down. We definitely know it’s going to be awesome.”
The Last of Us does not have a concrete release date, but it has been speculated for a release late 2012 to early 2013. It will see a release on the Playstation 3.
Arc System Works has today been confirmed to be developing the previously announced Phi Brain: Puzzle of God Playstation Portable game. Arc System Works are known for their two biggest franchises: BlazBlue and Guilty Gear.
The game itself is an adaptation of the popular puzzle battle anime series Phi Brain: Puzzle of God, which focuses on Daimon Kaito a genius who solves dangerous puzzles in order to free them from their evil creators and receive the prizes they hold. An evil organisation known as the P.O.G. want to use Kaito to unlock the Phi Brain by solving the Puzzle of God.
It is currently unknown as to what kind of game this will be. It can be assumed however that there will be puzzles to solve. The game is set to hit shelves across Japan at the end of May.
Hot off it’s recent announcement, details have surfaced on Saint Seiya Omega’s storyline and characters thanks to Mantan Web. The new series is set to be a direct sequel of the original Saint Seiya series.
The plot of Saint Seiya Omega, focuses on Koga a 13 year old boy who takes on the role of the Saint of Pegasus. He soon meets the rest of the Saints and becomes embroiled in a battle with Mars, who has kidnapped Athena to create a New World Order.
Several characters where also announced; Yuna (The heroine and Bronze Saint of Aquila), Soma (Koga’s best friend and Bronze Saint of Leo), Ryuho (Koga’s brtoher and Bronze Saint of Draco), Haruto (Bronze Saint of Lupus) and Eden (An enigma and Bronze Saint of Orion).
Saint Seiya Omega is set to premiere on the 1st of April 2012.
Those eager to see some more gameplay from Alan Wake’s American Nightmare will be willing to check out the developer diary that was released today by Remedy. In the video we see two developers talking about a few parts of the game, as well as how they chose to create a fully fledged XBLA title rather than a simple survival mode.
The video can be seen below and the game itself can be picked up on February 22nd for 1200 Microsoft Points. Also, it is highly recommended that you pay attention to the background as the developers speak. I won’t spoil it for you but it definitely isn’t something that should be missed.
It is interesting how social media can expand the public’s knowledge of upcoming games. Some of this news isn’t exactly ready to be revealed to the public however, so it is kept as secretive as possible. Then again, posting about a project on your LinkedIn profile is a good way to let the cat out of the bag.
Ubisoft Reflections’ Art Lead Joss Scouler, one of the devs behind Driver: San Francisco, updated his profile saying that he is currently working on a “confidential Kinect project,” though no other information was given. Any guesses as to what this title may be? A Driver title for the Kinect or perhaps some other spin-off for the motion control device?
Namco Bandai Games Europe have today revealed two limited special edition versions of Saint Seiya: Sanctuary Battle for the Playstation 3.
The first of which is the Headgear Box Edition (as seen below), which comes with an exclusive Sagittarius headgear model, a Saint Seiya t-shirt, Sagittarius downloadable character costume and of course the game itself.
The second special edition is the Myth Cloth Box Edition (as seen below), which features an exclusive Myth Cloth Box model, a different Saint Seiya t-shirt, the Sagittarius DLC and the Saint Seiya: Sanctuary Battle game.
Will you be picking up one of these special editions upon launch? Let us know in the shoutbox and comments section.
Anyone who follows Hideo Kojima on Twitter should know that he is very active when it comes to using this social media device. Now while nearly all of his tweets may be in Japanese, he is also very eager to post pictures of anything he is doing at any given moment.
Now most of these images are of interesting looking locations he is visiting, food he is about to eat and occasionally a few pictures of things that gamers are eager to hear more about. Today Kojima chose to place a picture of a PlayStation Vita running what appears to be Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, where players are able to pick either MGS2 or MGS3 from the menu screen. He said in the tweet that this was taken during a recording session for the PS Vita version of the game.
