Downloadable Content is just the thing needed to keep people talking about Battlefield 3, especially after Modern Warfare 3 and Skyrim have just come out. The first Battlefield 3 DLC pack, Back to Karkand, is coming out on Tuesday (12/6), part of a timed exclusive agreement between Sony and EA.
While not yet official, recent rumors have been circulating that Fumito Ueda, the head of Team ICO (the team that brought you ICO, Shadow of the Colossus, and the upcoming The Last Guardian), had some sort of falling out with Sony and has most likely left the company. Following this news, people started wondering what impact this would have on the production of The Last Guardian, the main question being if it would be completed at all. Well, it looks like us Team ICO fans have reason to rejoice, as Ueda himself recently updated his twitter stating that production is on. The Last Guardian would not stop, whether or not he was still contracted under Sony (which is still not 100% confirmed).
I guess the question that I have is if the rumors are true and Ueda has left Sony, what would he do next? If he made a separate studio and went multiplatform, that would certainly be devastating for Sony (as the Team ICO games are a big first party pull), but in the big picture, wouldn’t it be better if more people could experience the games that he makes? Regardless of Ueda’s employment state at Sony, The Last Guardian is set to release sometime in 2012, and I could not be more excited for it.
Bioware’s web video series Pulse has revealed some of the new changes made to Mass Effect’s gameplay in the third entry in the series, slated for March next year.
Things of note are the new unique abilities each class is getting. For example: my Shepard, being an Adept, will receive a new pull ability that makes shield carrying enemies easier to take down by making them drop the heavy armored shield they walk around with. Likewise, the more close range Vanguard class, which is known for the teleportation charge attack, will also receive an area effect damage ability that, while making you vulnerable by using your shield as its power source, will likely kill everything it hits.
Battlefield 3 is getting its first big DLC expansion next week on Tuesday, December 6th.
“Back to Karkland” will include four popular maps from past Battlefield games, three new vehicles, ten new weapons, five trophies and a new optional element to game modes called Assignments. The maps in question are Wake Island, Sharqi Peninsula, Gulf of Oman, and the DLC’s title map, Strike at Karkand, all of which are fully re-imagined for BF3 with the impressive Frostbite 2 engine.
A recent tweet that led to an article by Game Informer had me a bit baffled, as the numbers have come out and Modern Warfare 3 sold nearly triple the copies in Japan than the hotly anticipated Studio Ghibli and Level 5 title Ni No Kuni. The reason that this news shocked me so much is that, while I knew that the Modern Warfare series was highly successful in North America and Europe, I did not think that its global sales would be as significant. Now, I know that the sales numbers from Japan are nowhere near the multiple millions of copies sold in the US and Europe, but the fact that it can outsell a game like Ni No Kuni is a bit surprising.
While the US has not received a solid release date for the PS3 version of the game, the “Early 2012” window that has been thrown out may put it right in the release window of many other big titles such as Max Payne 3, Jak and Daxter HD Collection, and Mass Effect 3, but will it be able to separate itself from those titles and still sell well in the US, or will it fall by the wayside to the giants that will be right around the corner?
On November 29th, PSN users will be able to download the Sly Cooper HD Collection for $29.99 US or $10 each if they aren’t sure about playing all three. I played all the Ratchet and Clank and Jak and Daxter games on my PS2, so you’d think another cartoony action platformer series like this would have really interested me, but for one reason or another I just never got around to them. This may be the perfect chance for me, and anyone else who missed out, to give them a try. Exactly as Sony planned.
I and many other people who have played Naughty Dog’s latest entry in the monkey climbing adventures of Nathan Drake were quite surprised at the major changes made to the feel of Uncharted 3’s shooting mechanics. Those who have spoken out about this agree that, while the general control scheme remained identical, the dead zone of the reticule and all kinds of other subtle and technical aspects that go into every games interaction were definitely altered substantially from 2009s Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.
To deal with this, Naughty Dog actually offered to fly the most vocal of the games community to their offices to help them figure out exactly why the shooting didn’t feel right for so many, the conclusion being that for those gamers who enjoyed Uncharted 2 simply felt the way it played was superior to that of Uncharted 3 without actually having the knowledge and experience to explain how and why. Naughty Dog set out to find the answer and after many tests have decided to release an update to Uncharted 3 that will tweak how the game’s shooting feels in order to closer mirror Uncharted 2’s. Like Killzone 2, which also had its shooting tweaked, this will be an option that players can choose to toggle on and off in an upcoming patch.
In a move that is not surprising to anyone, and that has been leaked multiple times before its official announcement, the Jak and Daxter HD Trilogy is coming to Playstation 3 this February.
The contents of the package are each of the three original Jak and Daxter games. With the last game in the package (Jak 3) being released in 2004, it does give each of the games a sense of nostalgia, which is ultimately what Sony wants to happen. On the Playstation Blog (where this story was officially dropped), the response has been overwhelmingly good, which in my opinion is what is needed at this point in time. As of right now, the video game market has slowed down, but a large resurgence will come in February with releases likeMass Effect 3, Bioshock Infinite and (a bit later) Max Payne 3, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Sony timed the Jak and Daxter Collection to release at that time to boost first party support.
The PlayStation 3 turned 5 years old on November 17th. The PlayStation
brand struggled through some dark times in the early days of the PS3
launch. The PSP was decimated by the Nintendo DS and the PS3 was a year
behind on an XBox360 that was just starting to hit its stride. With a
staggering price point of $600.00 and a relatively weak launch line up,
year one was looking pretty grim. Sales were meager in the first years
of the PS3’s life. Sony, to their credit, never gave up.
Rockstar Games Vice President Dan Houser has stated in an interview with Gamasutra that once Max Payne 3 ships they may be looking into a sequel to the critically acclaimed high-school sandbox title, Bully.
“Contrary to a lot of people, we like to take a little bit of time at the end of a game before starting a sequel, so we can wait for the excitement or disappointment and everything else of the experience to shake down and really see what we should do in the next game. So we knew that we didn’t want to start doing the Bully sequel instantly at that second with those guys, even though it is a property that, like Max, we adore and might come back to in the future. There was just no impetus to do that then.”
