All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

Crank the nitrous and don't let go until you hit light speed.

Build your ride the way you want it!

Just one day after Famitsu scans revealed a PS3 release of Star Ocean: The Last Hope for Japan, Square Enix announced a North American release of Star Ocean: The Last Hope International. Since the Japanese game will include the English voice acting from the American release of the Xbox 360 version, localization time for this title is nil, there will be only five days between the Feburary 4 release in Japan and the February 9 North American release date! It's an achievement made possible by ... the game having already been released a year ago.In addition to English and Japanese voices, this version includes French, Italian, German, and Spanish language options. And, perhaps most importantly for new players, the "running on a PS3" option.

As with the first Left 4 Dead game, most of the TF2 team has moved over to help out Left 4 Dead 2 get through its final shipping steps. This time around, though, we've improved our process a little to ensure we can keep some people on TF2, enabling us to continue doing TF2 updates. We've been a bit slow on updating here, and there's plenty of stuff to talk about, so we might as well jump right in.

Demolish downtown.

So much for camping.

Boom: headshot.

A portion of a Dustructoid review: The game starts off unbelievably creepy, to the point that it reminded me of Silent Hill 2. Running through the opening town, ducking down tight alleys, and walking into rooms that were dank and filled with the smell of rotting meat and bodies, it actually built up a level of [...]

Microsoft is looking to add 18 new faces to its payroll in an attempt to bolster development on software implementing its new body movin' technology, Project Natal. These positions run the gamut from producer to audio director, all of which will be based out of Microsoft Game Studios' campus in Redmond, Washington -- indicating that MGS is building an entire team to work on future Natal projects. If you're a game developer with clever, original ideas about how the technology can be used, then check out Microsoft's now hiring page. If you've got a clever, original idea about a motion-sensitive Tae Bo fitness game, then keep that garbage to yourself. [Via Edge Online]

Here's something we're betting Sony will want to wish away using its "magic wand." Speaking with 1UP, Capcom producer Jun Takeuchi (Resident Evil 5) noted, "Speaking to other developers in Japan, I've heard a few of them say they were delighted by the Sony motion controller because they can just port over their Wii titles to the PS3."We're going to be optimistic here and presume these devs are at least considering a fresh coat of pixels for their ports. It's probably of more concern that, outside of Nintendo's first-party offerings, we've yet to see many studios even get Wii motion control right. Somehow, it's hard to picture Sony saying, "Yes, we welcome your waggle-infused minigame compilations with open arms!" Then again, PS3 "does everything" -- maybe even Wii games.

Inifinity Ward studio head Vince Zampella was exhausted, but in a good mood, by the time we caught up with him at a Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer event last night. Zampella's been working on one of the most anticipated sequels ever, after all. (GameStop has its fingers crossed for a slice of what could be the "bestselling title of all time.") After the break, Zampella shares his feelings about straddling two brands, Call of Duty and Modern Warfare; the Wii port of the original Modern Warfare; and World at War's Zombie Mode. And, of course, he's got a few words to share about Modern Warfare 2 itself. Read on.

What do Vampire Rain, Tales of Vesperia, Lost Planet, Eternal Sonata and Enchanted Arms all have in common? Aside from being developed in Japan, every one of them landed on the Xbox 360 "exclusively" first, only getting ported (sometimes with additional content) to the PlayStation 3 a year or so later. One Japanese developer claims the exclusivity agreements are being used in lieu of financial help from Sony for game development -- essentially saying that Japanese developers are using Microsoft's capital to develop temporarily exclusive 360 games with the intention of inexpensively porting the games to PS3 later on. "It was easier developing for the Xbox 360 ... if you sign an exclusive contract with Microsoft (you won't release it on other hardware for a year or similar), they will give you a lot of cash for development," read a Japanese developer's post (the original post has since been removed), translated by Sankaku Complex (site NSFW). "As a result, first you develop for the Xbox, reducing development costs. But the Xbox version won't sell [in Japan]. So they port it to the PS3 ... it's cheaper as you already have the game done." Though they didn't work on it, the developer claims to have seen this policy in practice with Tales of Vesperia. As Kotaku points out, it's quite possible that the dev did see such a practice on Vampire Rain, a game the mystery developer says they worked on.

Once you've chosen an appropriate site, your peasants will go to work, but beware hungry monsters!

Try your best to follow.

Another Code R, the Wii sequel to Trace Memory, isn't out in North America yet (and nobody's mentioned anything about it ever coming out), but the gears are turning at Cing regarding storyline elements for a sequel. Cing's Rika Suzuki told Cubed3 that the character "Matt" still has a story that has yet to be finished, and that the character has "a grand future ahead of him from which to use as source material."Suzuki also said that all of this story would be "expressed through the world of Another Code, including how his friendship develops with Ashley and more on the story of his father, Michael." While that could mean spinoff novels or something, the likeliest explanation is more video games![Via GoNintendo]

A PlayStation 3 Slim bundle containing a 250GB hard drive and Uncharted 2 was leaked by an anonymous tipster at Engadget. Though no price or release date info was provided, Engadget was able to independently confirm the bundle's legitimacy. We've reached out to Sony for comment and have yet to hear back as of publication [see update below], though a representative from Uncharted 2 developer Naughty Dog had yet to even hear of the bundle. Considering we heard about the larger hard drive nearly a month ago via an FCC filing (those things don't lie people!), we're pretty sure the Sony's just holding off on an announcement until the Tokyo Game Show next week. Those three UK-based PS3 bundles now seem to be that much more likely, don't they?Update: Sony America says, "That tip is a complete fabrication." To be clear, this statement does not represent SCE (Japan) or SCEE (Europe), though it does absolutely deny the existence of any 250GB PlayStation 3 bundle in the US this year.

Introduce a little anarchy to your very own fantasy world.