You got your own game now
The famed internet monster Slenderman stars in his own indie game that goes by the appropriate name of Slender. The game has you collecting 8 notes while runing away from the famed internet monster. If Slenderman fans are not excited enough then know that this game is for free. You can watch the game trailer which in turn has the download links to the game for your horror enjoyment in the link bellow.
According to game director Kazuhisa Wada, in a post on the official Persona 4 Arena Blog, Persona 4 Arena’s story mode will be a huge part of the game and will last somewhere between 30 to 40 hours. On top of that, the story is being written by the Persona Team themselves and will feature full voice acting. You can check out the Japanese trailer after the jump.
Hoooooooly crap. Dave Cox of MercurySteam, the Developers of Caslevania Lords of Shadow and the upcoming sequels, stated in an interview with VG247 that he and his team want to do a Contra game. He stresses that even though his team have done very well with the Castlevania reboot, he doesn’t want to be known as Mr. Castlevania. “… I don’t want to be in charge of a series that perhaps over a certain time is going to decline,” he states, which probably rings true for some franchises that have seen some major drops over time. As he feels his team has told the story of this Castlevania, he’d want his tem to “…go out with a bang and leave that as our legacy in the Castlevania universe.” Hey, no shame in that. Some of the best artists stepped out while the iron’s hot.
“I’d love to do Contra. At Mercury Steam we’ve got an original idea that I think is really awesome. We’d love to bring that idea to market and I’m hoping that the success of Lords of Shadow 2 will allow us to do that,” says Cox later on. The last Contra games to come out were Contra Rebirth on WiiWare and WayForward’s own Contra 4 on the DS. As long as it doesn’t become another FPS or TPS, I welcome this venture. Maybe something along the lines of Devil May Cry‘s and Metroid Other M‘s tight gameplay might suffice.
Moving on: Cox and Mercury Steam aim for Contra reboot [VG247, via Joystiq]
Oh WayForward how I love thee! Nintendo Power has revealed that 3DS download game Mighty Switch Force will be headed to the Wii U under the title Mighty Switch Force HD. Like its predecessor, it will be released as an eShop download on the system. And when they say HD, they mean it as the sprites will redrawn to look a lot cleaner. And boy, what they’ve shown is beautifully clean. Like, Earthworm Jim clean.
Let me fill you in quick on what the game is. Mighty Switch Force is a Puzzle Platformer where you’re a future cop trying to capture prisoners that have escaped. The cop lady has the ability to make platforms solidify and de-solidify to create platforms to jump on or knock enemies off the stage. I don’t had a 3DS, but I tried it out for a bit on James’, and I came this close to getting one on that game alone (and this was when the 3DS was still $250).
Mighty Switch Force HD is slated to launch on the Wii U eShop at the same time as the system.
Mighty Switch Force HD Headed To Wii U With Redesigned Sprites [Siliconera]
Before Street Fighter IV and fighting back Mega Man fans, Seth Killian was a fighting gamer, making waves in tournaments and an being an all-’round cool guy. Last week Sunday, Seth Killian announced that he would be leaving Capcom. And now it’s been announced that Seth has been hired by Sony as their Lead Designer and will be working with Sony Santa Monica, and by extension Superbot. In an interview with Kotaku, Seth mentions that his role as Lead Designer means working with multiple, “External” developers. When questioned if that would be counter-intuitive with what he’s known for, he clarified that it was the he was “Happy to say it’s just the opposite…” and that Superbot, the developer of Playstation All-Stars, fits the bill of External developer. He says that he’s more interested in the mechanics of game design and will be bringing his expertise to the projects assigned to.
So when Sony said they were bring in fighting game experts to develop PSAS, they weren’t kidding.
Street Fighter Expert Joins Sony to Dragon-Punch PlayStation All-Stars Into Shape [Kotaku]
They are not stopping anytime soon
In an interview between Kadokawa Games CEO Yoshimi Yasuda and Impress Watch, the CEO has mentioned that he and CEO of Grasshopper Manufacture Suda 51 have been going over player feedback from Grasshopper recent game, Lollipop Chainsaw. Yasuda admitted the player feedback was mixed. While he did get good comments, he also received bad feedback, both of which they will take into account.
The feedback is being used for the next game that both Kadokawa Games and Grasshopper Manufacture are working on, Killer Is Dead. The game is apparently close to its development peak so hopefully we get to see something about it soon because so far there have only been concept art concerning any relation to the game.
Some concept art after the break.
Sometimes all you need is a logo
Over the weekend, Namco Bandai released a teaser site that has “All Star Battle” across the screen. From what can be gathered, it’s covered with real life photos and has a countdown for this Thursday. You can see it in the link below.
As I previously reported, Namco Bandai is working with Nintendo on the new Super Smash Bros game. Can this possibly be a hint to that? It’s a little too early since they not long ago started production on the game. Maybe they’re releasing a character for Sony’s own all star game? If that’s true, it’ll be a little excessive just to say this such and such character is coming to Sony All-Star Battle Royale. Or maybe they working on their own all star game? Whatever stayed tuned for this Thursday for its big reveal and return to this page to make sure you get to the site without any confusion.
Time to put them down
The UK version of the Official PlayStation magazine has done an interview with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Online producer Daniel Brooke with him stating, “The Resistance franchise has been exciting to work on but as for the future we have no definitive plans.”
It’s no surprise that developer Insomniac Games has decided to no longer continue with the series, so maybe the discontinuing of the series is a natural process. The series ended on a high note on the PS3 with Resistance 3 and was well received by critics, with the Vita getting stuck with the mediocre Resistance: Burning Skies.
So how do you guys feel about this news? Do you even care that they ended or do you think that the series ended on a high note and should leave it at that? Comment below!
Amidst the absolute mess SEGA’s in right now comes word that SEGA is closing down some of its offices in Europe and Australia. The casualties in Europe are Germany, France, Spain, and Benelux. Australia is getting the axe completely. Jurgen Posts states that this is all part of SEGA’s business realignment strategy. All is not lost though, as Koch Media and 5 Star will be taking care of the territories affect by this strategy. Post does say something that makes me nervious for SEGA’s (and the industry as a whole) future. “The big IPs are becoming bigger, whether that’s FIFA, Call Of Duty or Assassin’s Creed, those titles are just becoming bigger and bigger and it’s harder and harder to break into the market with new IP.” This concerns me greatly since SEGA postponed Anarchy Reigns to 2013. Along with this, SEGA’s probably not going to do much exploration with themes, settings, and ideas.
At this point, I don’t know what to say about SEGA anymore. They have a plan, and unfortunately it looks like it might work… for them at least. It’s a shame we probably won’t get more out-there games like Space Channel 5 and ChuChu Rocket. But this problem stems from a deeper problem plaguing the industry, and I’ll get to that in the very near future.
Sega closing five European offices this year [GamesIndustry International, via Kotaku]
Let’s see what’s confirmed
As the title suggests, this article summarizes what has been confirmed this week. Hit the jump to see what’s confirmed.
He got something to say.
In an interview at the Game Developers Conference Taipei Summit 2012, the directer of Final Fantasy XIII and XIII-2, Motomu Toriyama, admitted “The development time was quite long. Within our company, developing on PlayStation for Final Fantasy XIII we required a huge amount of graphical data. … At the peak, there were over 200 people working on it.” That is quite a lot of people, and communication between the different departments must have been hard, which he admits to. “With a large-scale development team, we didn’t use our time well. How do you communicate to everyone in the department what the drive of the game is? We decided we needed to create more practical milestones, not story-based ones.”
It is interesting to hear that maybe Square Enix will try to be more practical with its time and money depending on the scale of the project that it is trying to achieve. It’s not to say the games before hand and current are horrible, but every Final Fantasy game after Final Fantasy X has been seen as mediocre to bad by fans, even though I personally like Final Fantasy XII myself. That felt more like a fantasy than any other game in the series.
Toriyama then comes to a sense of realization when he expressed that when keeping a large-scale project a secret, things like game testing becomes harder to accomplish. Realizing that, he also has to include western technology and production techniques which could make the process longer. This in turn forced him to release Final Fantasy XIII without the changes he wanted to implement into it. So he released Final Fantasy XIII-2 with the changes that he would have placed in the original title. The director even admits, “We are also thinking that we will not do large-scale internal development any longer. We have a lot of great creators in Square Enix, but for larger-scale development we will be doing more distributed and outsourced development to reach our targets on time.” The director already has a set idea and plan ready it seems. “In the beginning of a month we decide the achievements for that month. We decide the core of what we need to do, and plan for that.”
So what do you guys think? Is his plan and ideas for how Square Enix does its development for future Final Fantasy games a sound idea? Let me see your comments below.
None of them actually hit you, but you get the idea.
Slowly but surely doujin localizing company Nyu Media has been rising up in fame, finding its niche nicely in the download scene. Releasing indie games from Japan that would otherwise fly over most U.S. publishers heads, Nyu Media has brought over shmup game The eXceed Collection and adventure game Cherry Tree High Comedy Club. And so a new release dawns, Ether Vapor Remaster, an enhanced port of a shmup game originally released back in 2007 in Japan. I tried the game out… and (after some futzing with my shitty-ass computer to get it to work. I’ll talk about this some other time.), I was issued a pure ass beating only an old-school game can dish out.
He mad yo! After hearing enough whining from Tekken fans about changes to the voices of the characters, Katsuhiro Harada took to Twitter to address these fans. It’s a long one, but the basic jist of his schooling is that he’s heard people bitch about how Namco’s changed the voice actors to much of the Tekken fighters as the installments go by. This is in part to the changes made to recording technology, equipment, and format being different from how it was 15 years ago. He uses Brian Fury and his maniacal laugh as an example of a voice they’ve reused over and over (at the request of fans who like his laugh). While his voice actor is a different one from back then, the voice file for the laughing is still the same one from Tekken 3 (Brian’s debut game). He points out that the laughing voice sounds different from his normal voice, which in turn make his voice inconsistent. But he keeps it because fans would be upset if they changed it.
He also mentions that voice actors sometimes cannot replicate the same voice over the years for many reasons, including voices changing, vocal health, retirement, or contracts/rights. He pleads with them, but sometimes they have to make due with the new blood. I say good on him that he’s stepping in to shut fans up. Some would wonder why I’m giving him the pass while others get the boot. Well, compared to them, Harada (and other veterans of the industry) have been in the business for a while and know their shit. As I always say: Be a pro before you can be a dick. You can read the tweet in its entirety on Kotaku.
Tekken Head Unleashes Twitter Tirade [Kotaku]
This old dog is not done yet.
In a recent interview with French magazine IG, the creator and creative director of the Metal Gear Solid series, Hideo Kojima, has released some info about his next installment in the Metal Gear Solid series. He has said the game will be running on Konami’s own Fox Engine and he has been quoted to say “On the topic of Metal Gear Solid 5, I can tell you two things. There will be much question of infiltration, espionage, and convincing people to give you ‘a favor’ like in the last Metal Gear Solid.” This left me wondering if Kojima is looking to make the Metal Gear Solid world more expanded and interactive. This thought was solidified when Kojima told the magazine “I liked the idea of social interactions in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, but we will see.”
Oh and before people start trying to find hints of Metal Gear Solid 5 in Metal Gear Rising: Revengance when it comes out, just know that Kojima has also stated “Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance never pretended to be Metal Gear Solid. It’s not a game about our beloved Solid Snake. It’s a spin-off that tries something different.”
Well, I personally thought that Metal Gear Solid 4 was the last game for dear old Snake. I would’t mind jumping in the shoes of Snake once again but seeing all the events that lead up to Metal Gear Solid 4 and seeing the ending, one would think that was the ultimate finale for Snake. Well it’s up to the creator though to say when to say the character’s final journey is but I leave off with Kojima’s insightful quote from the IG magazine interview “We haven’t seen the last of Solid Snake, despite the fact that I wanted to let him die at the end of Guns of the Patriots”
Wowza that’s a lot of characters! However this is only considering allies and enemies and not actually the main characters you’ll be controlling in the game. According to the Project X Zone blog (translated by Andriasang), “This figure includes allies and enemies. It does not include characters who appear exclusively in event scenes.” The blog also states that these aren’t no generic, wire-frame multi-mook melee fodder, but instead characters from many franchises of each of the three companies. Who could those characters be? We already know that Q-Bee is in as an enemy, but will she change sides?
Since Namco’s handling Smash Bros. development (along with Sakurai’s Project Sora), maybe they might want to share the crossover love and, you know, localize it for the West! Remember, there’s a fan campaign to get this game out in the West. So hop to it!
もっとも未知なる交差領域で [PXZ Blog, translated by AndriaSang, via Joystiq]
The Wired Fish Network 