Platformers.net

Upcoming issue of Qore to feature invite to PS3 Home Beta
PS3 owners, been waiting long for a taste of Sony’s upcoming Home? Well, that wait may be coming to an end, because now Sony’s online publication, Qore, will feature an invitation for subscribers and single-issue purchasers to the closed beta-test of Home. The invite will be included with the upcoming November issue of Qore.

Lionhead working on fix for Fable II glitch
Another wait for gamers is now hopefully growing shorter as well. With the release of Peter Molyneux’s action/fantasy title Fable II, gamers have encountered a terrible, game-breaking glitch, which prevents players from progressing through the game if they do not let the conversation and cutscene with an abbot for the “Monk’s Quest” questplay out. However, Lionhead Studios is currently looking into the matter, with one developer, known simply as Ted, saying that it is a “matter of priority.”

E3 to be in Los Angeles until at least 2011
And, perhaps, a wait for those cities who may have been hoping for a piece of the revenue that E3 brings to Los Angeles every year. News broke Friday that the expo will be booked with the city of Los Angeles, California for the next three years, up through 2011. LA’s mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was pleased with the deal, which according to source Edge is expected to bring $18 million into the city’s economy.

“The videogame industry is one of the few industries in the nation that continues to show signs of growth, and ESA’s three-year commitment to Los Angeles is a testament to our City’s formidable hospitality and technology sectors,” said Villaraigosa.

Users are in your Home, hacking your doodz
Not that it’s unexpected, but PS3’s Home has been hacked. While most of it is just backend stuff right now, the hackers seem confident that it will lead to opening up the system as much as it opened up the PSP.  You know what might be a better use of hacking Home?  Making it not boring.

Wii storage hacked to be slightly less shitty
It’s not just the PS3 that’s being hacked, though I’m not sure you’d call this a hack so much as a workaround.  At the moment, the Wii only has 232mb of workable, savable space.  You can add SD cards, but they can’t be above two gigs.  So if you buy a lot of Wii Ware games, you’re kind of fucked.  Until now, anyway.  This thread on CheapAssGamer shows how you can load a four gig SD card with two gigs of dummy files, get the Wii to recognize it, then delete all the dummy files.  There, four more gigs of space.  If you have five of those cards, you might get your Wii’s onboard storage to catch up to 2005!

Bioshock 2 “destined for all next-gen platforms”
Rest easy, PS3 fans who enjoyed Bioshock!  Barring some sort of one or two month exclusivity deal by Microsoft, Take 2 insists that Bioshock 2 will hit Windows, PS3, and 360 at the same time.  The story can be found at Gamespot, which includes the teaser trailer that was on the PS3 version of the original game.  Worth watching if you haven’t seen it.

E3 2009 dated
The Electronic Software Association sent a press release out Wednesday announcing the date for E3 2009, which will be known as the E3 Expo (opposed to the previous name, “E3 Media and Business Summit”). The event will be held June 2 through June 4, at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California.  As well, there is the possibility of the expo will return to its previous incarnations; the press release talks about the last “real” E3 having been held in 2006, and the 2009 show will be “twice as big” as the 2006 event. However, there is no word on the possibility of this being the first E3 to allow official access to the public, mentioning simply that access would be allowed to ESA members and non-members. The site for the expo is available here.

Ono: Street Fighter IV to hit US consoles in winter
North American gamers looking forward to the latest Street Fighter title won’t have to wait for muhc longer, according to Street Fighter IV producer Yoshi Ono. According to Ono, who feels disappointed that North American gamers have had to  wait to play the game with no official arcade release in the region, said in an interview with G4’s X-Play that gamers can look forward to the console version of the title this winter, although not necessarily within the 2008 portion of the upcoming season.

No Gears of War 2 for Japan, Germany
It would seem that any gamers in Germany and Japan that may have been looking forward to playing the upcoming Gears of War 2 are out of luck. Microsoft announced Wednesday that the title, whose original entry also hadn’t been released in Germany, will not see release in either country.  It is currently unknown what the reasoning was for it’s lack of Japanese release, but gaming site has contacted Microsoft and is awaiting a response, pertaining as to whether it was refused ratings classification or merely was not submitted for it.

In their latest Atlus Faithful e-mail, the publisher unveiled a new entry in the Ys series: Legacy of Ys: Books I & II. The title, which is being developed for the Nintendo DS is a 3D remake of the two original games. According to Atlus, the title will feature remixed music, local-wireless multiplayer that will serve up to four players and optional touch screen controls alongside the new graphics. The title will be available in North America on Feb. 10, 2009. You can view the trailer for the game here . We’ll have more info on the title as it becomes available.

Bioware and Lucasarts unveil Star Wars: The Old Republic, a KOTOR MMO
EA, Bioware and Lucasarts revealed Tuesday the latest entry in the Knights of the Old Republic Franchise, Star Wars: The Old Republic. According to the developers at Bioware, the title will allow the company to do more things than they could have done in a KOTOR 3, jokingly suggesting that gamers could consider the MMO KOTOR sequels three through “12-plus.” The title will have two main factions, The Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire and players of either faction can be aligned with the Light and Dark sides of the Force. No release date or console versions have yet been specified for the title, which should be noted will not be replacing the current Star Wars MMO Star Wars Galaxies.

Alan Wake lives, gets new trailer
Microsoft released a new trailer Tuesday for their long-coming thriller title Alan Wake, showing that development on the game is still progressing. The title had not been seen at either E3 2008 or the 2008 Tokyo Game Show, leading some gamers to wonder the fate of the title. No release date is mentioned in the trailer, but some story details are shown, such as titular character Alan’s coming to town, as well as the mysterious effect his writings are having on reality.

Avatars on NXE possibly to be linked to online images.
According to an anonymous source speaking with Joystiq’s Xbox360Fanboy.com, the Avatars introduced in Microsoft’s New Xbox Experience will likely be tied to image URLs, such as could be used for forum avatars and related profiles. Currently, images of the gamertags and avatars of Trixie and Chris Paladino of Microsoft are the only two discovered that utilize this feature, with other gamertags will simply result in an Xbox logo appearing. More information should develop on the feature as the November date of the NXE launch draws nearer.

Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?: Make the Grade (DS)

This is actually a pretty neat game, as it’s very meta. Here’s how you play:

1: Buy Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader
2: Find a 5th grader with DS
3: If said 5th grader is playing any game other than Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader, you fail.

Back at the Barnyard: Slop Bucket Games (DS)

The existence of Slop Bucket Games raises a number of troubling questions:

*Why does THQ hate us?
* If you’re in the market for Slop Bucket Games, do you consider yourself above the Harvest Moon series?
*Is there an artificial insemination minigame using the stylus as a syringe full of cow semen?
*If not, why?
*Why on earth is this being sold for thirty bucks?

Bioshock (PS3)

It’s good to see the PS3 finally become as viable as the 360–

–from August 2007.

I question if Bioshock can still hold up as a AAA title. I loved the game when it first came out, and consider it GOTY for 2007, but perhaps more than any good game in recent memory, it doesn’t really hold up well after the initial play through. The vaunted Little Sister gameplay mechanic never fully realized itself, and the Big Daddies held little threat after the first five hours of gameplay. It was a game victim to it’s own multitude of options– once you started exploring the levels and gaining weapon upgrades and powerups, the game became almost absurdly easy. But the story and setting are enough to make this must-play material for hardcore gamers, it’s just a shame the game never really lived up to 2k’s own expectations.

Disney Sing It (Wii, PS3, PS2, 360)

I can remember a time back in the 32 bit era where a Disney karaoke game would be contending for the most embarrassing thing to happen to gaming for the entire year, between the N64 shaped like Pikachu and news that Sega was calling their new system the “Dreamcast”. We would stand around the Babbage’s counter, share a laugh about these developments while talking about how awesome Parasite Eve before going home alone to masturbate to jpgs of hentai pornography.

Now I’m not sure I’d be willing to call Sing It the most wince-inducing videogame so far this update.

Eternal Sonata (PS3)

Note to PS3 owners: don’t bother sending out resumes to Ernst and Young.

Fable 2 (360)

I loved the original Fable to death, right up until about the three hour mark where I realized I was basically playing a fenced in Zelda with funny accents. That said, I felt Fable could be a legitimate AAA game if it weren’t for a few fundamental flaws:

* A main quest that lasted all of five hours
* No consequence at all given the lauded good/evil gameplay mechanic
* Three-foot high fences that were impervious to jumping, axes, magic and swearing

To counter these complaints, Peter Moleneux endowed Fable 2 with the following:

* A seven hour long main quest
* Map dog

More distressing to fans of the original game are Moleneux’s pleas to the gamer press to “Please don’t review this game in the same way that a hardcore gamer would. In fact, if you could get non-gamers to review Fable 2, that’d be better. Maybe someone blind and without thumbs. Do you have a dog? Dogs are good. Hey, you remember Dungeon Keeper, right? “

A month ago, Fable 2 was up there on my list of must-buy titles of 2008, along with Fallout 3 and Mirror’s Edge and Prince of Persia: The Next One. Now Fable 2 ranks somewhere between elective spleen removal and purchase of a grocery bag full of skunk anal scent glands.

Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon (PS2, PS3, PSP, 360, Wii, Sinclair ZX Spectrum,– just kidding, it’s not actually on the PSP )

There are some concepts so brain-dead obvious for translation to videogames that developers just can’t get right. Transformers games, for instance. You’d think a game about cars and jets that turn into robots would be a natural for the digital form– but the Mech Game Corollary comes into play and ruins any attempt at creating a decent game of the concept.

Same way with dragon games. They’re huge, breathe fire, fly, eat villagers, generally ruin shit. It seems like they’d be obvious candidates for the basis of good gaming– However, unless the game features Panzer Dragoon in the title, dragon-based games are downright horrible.

So wither the Spyro franchise. which has had sixteen games, five developers, and virtually every game-capable hardware platform to create a single memorable videogame experience, yet when you ask hardcore gamers what we think of the series we’re stuck trying to remember if that was the one with the commercial of a marmoset screaming into a bullhorn outside of Nintendo HQ.

As far as this particular Spyro goes, this is the first game in the series that allows the player to fly at any time during the game– which, I dunno, you’d figure would be the main component of a game series based on being a flying, fire-breathing lizard. It look these people ten friggin’ years to finally think that free flight would be a good idea?

Little Big Planet (PS3)

Media Molecule has exceeded my wildest expectations with this title– If I had to guess any company to finally unleash the Jihad Al-Talib upon gamers, it’d have been Sega. Good work, guys.

Lovely Lisa (DS)

I’d do more research on this title, but I’m positive I’ve been placed on a New York State pedophile watchlist just for looking up the box art on Gamestop.

Master of the Monster Lair (DS)

This would appear to be a combination of Tecmo’s Deception and Monster Lair using the DS, and if hearing that doesn’t cause a tingling in your nether regions then you’re reading the wrong website.

Midnight Club LA (360, PS3)

I’m not really sure what Midnight Club is doing anymore that Need for Speed doesn’t do every single year.

But it’s a dry year for quality racers, and it’s not like Rockstar makes bad games. That said, you’d think Rockstar would be clever enough to figure out a way to include Midnight Club cars in GTA4 and vice versa.

Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution 2 (Wii)

Fuck this noise, I’m going to use this paragraph to talk about a real ninja game– Legend of Kage 2 for the DS.

I’ve not been shy in my opinion that ninja games make the very best videogames– even the passing presence of ninjas can largely suffice to make an otherwise annoying and obtuse game kickass, as evidenced by Metal Gear Solid’s Cyberninja.

LoK2 is the very essence of a ninja game– insanely high jumps, air dashes, rampant eviscerations, busty women in improbably loose-fitting gis– add in a giant rock dude and a healthy dose of superfluous bare breasts and you’ve pretty much got Ninja Scroll, the videogame. It’s development was quite obviously a labor of love from Tatio, much like Space Invaders Extreme before it, and it’s presence makes me yearn for the same treatment to be given to Shinobi and Ninja Gaiden and (especially) Strider.

It’s not perfect, but then what is with gaming, especially when you’re dealing with a very deliberate throwback to the 8 bit era– the graphics are sparse, the levels largely interchangable, the DS Lite buttons entirely too small and indistinct for the type of game you’re playing– but it represents what I feel to be the very essence of gaming, and encapsulates so many things of what made me fall in love with the medium that I can easily overlook it’s faults. At twenty bucks we should probably all own it, if for no other reason than to become a little more grounded in an age of Wii Sports and Guitar Hero and Brain Training. This is a videogame, unapologetically so, and something that deserves our attention, if not devotion.

Pass the Pigs (DS)

We now have a videogame based around a game based around tossing rubber pigs on a table and seeing how they land. We’re talking about a mechanic barely a step removed from tossing coins in the air, and THQ is selling it to an unsuspecting public for twenty dollars. A random dice roller is more sophisticated than this game! I don’t know to be horrified or amazed.

Penny Racers Party (Wii)

Prior to filing this report, I had the pleasure of being privy to an exclusive interview with Tomy CEO, Kantaro Tomiyama:

Nfinit: It’s a pleasure to meet someone with such an initmate connection with the industry an how our games are HOLY GOD WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR EYEBALLS?

Tomiyama: Shortly before my company got into the business of producing videogames, I was invited aboard the experimental starship Event Horizon. Upon that ill-fated voyage I saw sights so horrific that I felt compelled to tear my own eyeballs free of their sockets. In unrelated news, I recently promoted myself to Tomy’s Quality Assurance team lead.

Spider-Man: Web of Shadows

Funny thing about Web of Shadows– it may wind up being a better Fable 2 than Fable 2 itself. At the very least it looks like it may actually deliver on a storyline the player has some actual input in the outcome of, and something actually resembling a good/evil mechanic that does more than effect housing prices.

It looks incredibly well-done, which surprises me, as I associate Treyarch more with Call of Duty games and cash-in movie tie-in games than AAA-contender titles. The fact that comic book games have generally sucked since Capcom stopped doing Marvel Vs games doesn’t help its pedigree.

Star Ocean: First Departure (PSP)

The only thing this game does is annoy me that we’re never ever ever ever going to see a proper Phantasy Star V.

Touchmaster II (DS)

Upon closer inspection, this game has absolutely nothing to do with Ifeelmyself.com. I feel betrayed. And drowsy. But mostly betrayed.

Wii Music (Wii)

I’m not going to get into the argument if Wii Music is or isn’t a game, all I know is it’s a game that I have no interest in whatsoever. But that’s okay, I’m not interested in Beverly Hills Chihuahua either, but it doesn’t keep me from enjoying W.

The larger question is if something like Wii Music– which firmly establishes Nintendo as a lifestyle company instead of a videogame company– is harmful to the industry as a whole. May be. But I know this is also the same industry and same console that allows me to play No More Heroes and Mad World and Mega Man 9, so the damage must be limited in scope– after all, we’re talking about the same industry that generated 13 billion dollars in 2006 while selling Okami and Gears of War and Twilight Princess. There’s simply too much money to be found selling games to hardcore gamers for something like the Wii Music– or the Wii in general, really– to do any sizable, long-term damage.

But you do have to be worried about Nintendo– when Shigero Miyamoto is no longer interested in Zelda as much as he is in flailing his arms vaguely in time with the theme to Zelda, you may have a real, quantifiable problem.

New XBox Experience is ready, just not for Primetime
Remember at E3 when Microsoft unveiled their new dashboard and promised a new tab of nauseating content centered around game shows with your avatar?  Well, it’s not going to launch with the new dashboard itself, according to Forbes.  The content isn’t expected to make it to the console until Spring of next year.  Take your time.  Really.

Halverson: Scoring Golden Axe below a 7 is irresponsible.
Dave Halverson really likes Golden Axe.  One only needs to look at the, ahem, titular main character and recall a bit of Halverson’s history to understand why he would feel this way.  This public display of manchildness, however, has given rise to his newest complaint: anyone who doesn’t like the game sucks at it. He also insists they don’t understand game design quite like he does and proceeds to put “press” and “review” in quotes any chance he can get.  Oh, Dave.  As if Sonic 2006 and Lair didn’t ruin your reputation hard enough.

Sony “investigating the issue with PSP-3000 screens”
So it turns out the PSP-3000, while eliminating the ghosting problems that plague other versions, also has scanlines up the figurative wazoo.  Sony, who was seemingly unaware of this, has promised to “investigate the issue thoroughly”.  Eh, take your time.  After two years with as many PSPs, I don’t see why we just don’t wait until PSP-4000 or 5000, really.

Little Big Planet will be out in Europe by Nov. 7th, promise
Hey! You may not have noticed, but you don’t own Little Big Planet yet. If you live in Europe, you might have no idea when you will own Little Big Planet. Fear not! While there’s no firm release yet, Sony says that the game will be out in Europe, Australia, and the Middle East “no later than the week commencing Monday 3rd November”. That might mean stores can sell them whenever they get them that week or a firm date is still being decided on.

Mortal Kombat II dropped from PSN, not even Sony knows why
The new PS3 firmware update did some neat things. It also made it so a lot of people can’t see Mortal Kombat II listed. It’s unlikely the game was dropped, as it sells well on the Playstation Network, so even Sony is puzzled when they began receiving six pages of comments on their message boards about the title being delisted. They say a fix is coming soon as soon as they figure out what went wrong.

Okami replacement covers have finally shipped
Remember that hullaballoo a few months back about Okami Wii using art lifted from IGN, complete with water mark, on the boxart? At the time, Capcom let people order covers of other game art as a replacement, then all mention of any alternate covers drifted away. Well, they’ve finally shipped, and they look pretty great. They’d make nice posters if you don’t plan to replace your historic Watermarkgate cover.

Metal Gear Solid 4 on 360 rumors get further hyped, convoluted
With rumors once more making the rounds of an Xbox 360 port for Konami and Kojima Productions’ Metal Gear Solid 4 it was only a matter of time until the arguments once more began as to whether or not the system could handle the title. Now, Microsoft Live corporate vice president  John Schappert says the answer to that question is a resounding yes.

“I can’t speak on behalf of Konami, but I can shed more light on the fact that we definitely have the power to run MGS4,” Schappert told The Market for Computer and Video Games (MCV). “There are a lot of recent examples that are in true high-def on our platform and aren’t on PS3. We’ve got an amazing amount of horsepower and graphics power.”

However, things have gotten more confusing with the possible port. According to source Kotaku, the quote indicating the port is being looked into has now been removed from the article, replaced instead with a more unspecified quote regarding Konami’s multiplayer efforts.

EA’s John Riccitiello speaks on Mirror’s Edge, Grasshopper and Brutal Legend
Gamers got to learn more Thursday regarding several events surrounding Electronic Arts thanks to an a recent interview with company CEO John Riccitiello by Gamasutra. During the interview, Riccitiello revealed that he was the reason behind the mirrors in the upcoming first person adventure title Mirror’s Edge, out of a desire to be able to see Faith, the player’s character; beforehand, he actively urged the developers to make the title a third person title, a move he now feels was wrong given how the game has turned out.

As well, Riccitiello revealed that he was initially nervous over the decision to partner with No More Heroes and Killer 7 developer Grasshopper Studios. However, he trusts that the developers will do a good job.

On a potentially negative note, however, lays the fate of Brutal Legend, the new game by Psychonauts creator Tim Schaffer. Among the titles dropped in the Activision-Vivendi merger, some have hoped that EA might be willing the Double Fine developed title.

“I am well aware of what the game is,” said Riccitiello. “It’s a very significant creative risk.”

However, Riccitiello added that he felt that there have been a few successful games that were deemed creative risks, such as the recently released Spore

Warhammer players returning to WoW says Blizzard COO
“The good news is that we’ve seen a significant number of people, well over half, that cited Warhammer as their reason for leaving - they’ve already returned.”

So says Blizzard COO Paul Sams, who says that while players have left the company’s World of Warcraft MMO for competitor Electronic Arts’s recently released Warhammer: Online, are returning. However, even with those returning players, he feels that the title, with 750,000 players registered, poses a significant rival to the much played WoW.

“I think Warhammer is best positioned to succeed out of the various products that have come out thus far since World of Warcraft has come out,” said Sams.

Play Burnout? Unsatisfied with the economy? Vote for Obama! This probably isn’t treading new ground for games, but it does seem like a first for the Obama campaign. As GigaOM reports, Obama campaign signs have been seen in the next-gen game, Burnout Paradise. The billboard emphasizes the importance of early voting and contains a picture of Obama himself. We know from a few weeks ago that EA donates heavily to Obama’s campaign, so this is a pretty good relationship for them.

New 360 firmware won’t allow movie-sharing immediately ShackNews confirms today that the ability to share Netflix movies with other Live users has been cut from the fall update (popularly referred to as NXE). The feature, which Sony also insists is a core part of their Home experience, seems to have been an issue between Microsoft and Netflix. Microsoft still makes room for the possibility that it will be added in later, however.

It was inevitable - Little Big Planet proposal video To avoid confusion from the title, no, someone did not ask Little Big Planet to marry them. They did, however, as all level creators eventually bear, create a a marriage proposal level for what we can only assume is another human and not, you know, a few gigs of data.

Originally written by Imran, frontpaged by Lanz