All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

Players can help Lucia celebrate with a lost and found event, birthday comets and a special animation accessory sale.

#realitymarketing Cops and robbers MMO APB is world filled with grungy-looking criminals covered with tattoos and riddled with piercings. Now Realtime Worlds is letting fans vote on how they permanently disfigure a real human being with the Human Avatar Project. More »

Der (die?, das?) boomshakalaka of NBA Jam has been classified by the German USK for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The PlayStation 3 classification passed on June 24, while the Xbox 360 version went through July 5. Curiously, the Wii version of the game -- the only one to have been officially announced -- has not yet been classified by the agency.

We're currently following up for comment from EA on the ratings and will update as soon as we hear something.

Looks like Mr. Metal Gear will remain just that for the time being.

Looks like Mr. Metal Gear will remain just that for the time being.

Looks like Mr. Metal Gear will remain just that for the time being.

We were all surprised to see a Metal Gear Solid demo for 3DS. Probably not as surprised, however, as the Kojima Productions staff who didn't know it was being developed. In a Famitsu interview (translated by Andriasang), Hideo Kojima described how, after the completion of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, he secretly assigned a small number of staffers to the project on a different floor of the Kojima Productions office -- causing other Kojipro staff to believe the others were on vacation.

Kojima seems confident that the demo will evolve into a full game, which will probably still be a remake of Metal Gear Solid 3 -- after Peace Walker, he wanted to tell the story of The Boss again. "MGS3's story can't change, so we're thinking of Co-ops, 3D and portable-like elements," Kojima said. The final game may actually look better than the demo, as well. "The high level models are about the same quality as the stuff we made on the PlayStation 3," Kojima said, "although it's tough to see this. If we'd had a bit more time, we could have made something better."

Prequel to the blockbuster "Halo" trilogy available at GameStop stores Sept. 14.

#davidjaffe Now that the cat is out of the bag, developer David Jaffe has gone from denying the existence of a new Twisted Metal game to spilling beans about it. More »

Playable on both PS3 and PSP.

#officialkotakuforum Are you waiting for your favorite gaming franchise to reach its third installment? We can't help. But we can release Talk Amongst Yourselves 3 today, if that's any consolation. Now, please talk about video games here. More »

Black Rock's racer going portable this year.

New social game based on strategy first's well-known space strategy odyssey.

Calypso Gateway gives beginning colonists a place to call home.

As many of you have pointed out, we’ve been quiet on PlayStation.Blog Share since it launched on St. Patrick’s Day. We’ve been sitting back, allowing you to do your thing: over a million votes have been cast, and you’ve contributed a lot of great, often surprising ideas. We thank you for your involvement so far. Now it’s time for the next step.

The first thing we figured out (and quickly!) during the launch of Share is that you all have a lot more ideas than we have people to approve them for voting. So, starting today, we’re turning over the moderation reins to you. Did someone just submit the same idea you suggested months ago? Flag it for us. We’ll keep the original.

It’s a fairly simple procedure, but we wanted to explain a little bit here to eliminate any confusion. All you have to do is identify an idea and its duplicate. Click “Report as Duplicate” on the idea that you believe is the copycat (the one you think should be deleted and/or merged). Make sure to take note of the original idea’s ID number. You’ll need this in the second step.

After you click “Report as Duplicate,” you’ll receive a pop-up window like this one. It is here that you will input the ID number of the original idea that is being duplicated by the idea you’re reporting. Once that number has been inputted, click submit.

Now, to be clear, this process will not remove ideas from the site, rather it will flag the two ideas for our moderators. At this point, it will be up to them to make a judgment call about what to do with them. One of two things will happen: either the two ideas will be merged, combining the votes and comments, or one will be deleted in favor of the other. The former is most likely in the majority of situations.

Self moderation was actually an idea suggested by you readers – you’ll note that it, along with other of our ideas that we’ve acted upon have been sorted into a new category: Ideas in Action. These range from long-time fan requests like the Canadian Video Store, to more simple things like bringing Blog meetups to the East Coast. We’ll continue to keep this area updated as we roll out new requested features, titles, and policies. PS – this was another request.

The next step for Share will hit later this Summer: weekly programming. Instead of just continue to keep the floodgates open for ideas about anything, we’ll be looking for ideas related to specific subjects – things where your feedback could lead to an immediate impact.

In the meantime, please keep those ideas and votes coming – we’re reading!

#betawatch A new patch for the StarCraft II beta test has hit Europe, raising hopes that the promised phase two of the test will be starting shortly. More »

For Hori, the release of Virtual-On Force is another excuse to sell its expensive Twin Stick EX controller. The peripheral company is producing another run of the ¥30,000 ($344) Twin Stick EX, now bearing the Virtual-On Force logo and targeted at a winter release to coincide with that game.

An online home for your squad.

While you probably know about Alan Wake by now (we liked it a lot), and you probably know about the game's unconventional soundtrack, full of licensed tracks from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds to David Bowie, you may be less familiar with the game's original score by Finnish composer Petri Alanko. In short, it's not what you'd expect from a "psychological action thriller." Instead, you'll find something far more "romantic," Alanko says; a wistful arrangement with piano and strings that's a little more light than dark.

If you enjoyed Mr. Alanko's work and - especially if you didn't get the Collector's Edition whose soundtrack disc contained five tracks from the score - you'll be pleased to learn that Sumthing Else Music is releasing the full original score on July 20, featuring 18 tracks of orchestral music. You can pre-order the CD on Amazon now or, if you prefer the digital route, wait until the 20th and hit up Sumthing.com or iTunes.

#free Activision hooked us up with some codes for the PC and Playstation 3 versions of the latest Modern Warfare 2 pack. More »

Disney Interactive has announced that its havoc-wreaking racer, Split/Second, is drifting onto the PSP in time for the holiday. The basic structure of the game will remain intact -- players drive across booby trap-infused tracks, attempting to take out the competition by setting off hazards at opportune times. Online multiplayer is a no-show, but up to four players will be able to engage in ad-hoc races.

We're awfully curious about how Disney plans on porting Split/Second's big, blockbuster feel to a much smaller device. More than that, though, we're looking forward to the game's first commercial, where a kid is playing his PSP in the back of his mom's minivan, and oh no, the road's blowing up in real life! And the mom's swerving out of the way, like, why is this happening? And the kid smiles, knowingly.

#arcade This is famed Osaka arcade U.F.O. Nagase. So full of life and drink machines. More »

Two "new" maps have been added to Battlefield: Bad Company 2, free to Xbox 360 and PS3 players who bought the game new and registered their VIP codes. PC players will unlock the new maps through an in-game patch. Atacama Desert has been added to Rush Mode, while Conquest mode has seen Port Valdez added to the rotation.

And when will new (no quotation marks) maps drop into the popular first-person shooter? It's looking more and more likely that the recently announced Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Vietnam expansion (coming "winter 2010") will be the first add-on to include new terrain.

Check out a video featuring the latest map update after the break.

#covers Here is Michael Jordan on the cover of this fall's NBA 2K11. Cool image, a long time coming, but isn't Muhammad Ali "the greatest of all time"? More »

#japan Nothing says "historical action game" like food at karaoke parlors. More »

#beer Reader Ben was at the Flying Saucer in Raleigh the other day when he noticed something strangely familiar about the pub's "wall of fame". More »

#toys There still aren't any official Fallout figures. Shame. There are custom figures, though, like this one, which is pretty great. More »

"It doesn't make sense anymore," Activision executive VP of worldwide studios Dave Stohl declared to us in a small office, hidden away from the noisy E3 show floor. "You've really got to focus." The executive, who oversees every development studio that Activision owns, was reflecting on the old business model that encouraged studios to take on multiple projects at once. Today, the industry's leading third-party publisher has a new mantra: one game per studio.

"People want the freedom to put all their resources against the big opportunity, and that's what we're trying to do," Stohl explained during our conversation at last month's show. We wondered if the shift in strategy was less ingenuity and more a sign of the times. Last year's holiday season was headlined by two major events: the slowdown of music game sales and the ridiculous success of Modern Warfare 2.

#loveplus Love Plus, Konami's schoolgirl love simulator for the Nintendo DS, is quite popular in Japan. How popular? The game's heroines recently graced the cover of a mainstream TV listings magazine. More »

Battlefield: Bad Company 2's "Onslaught", a new co-op "horde" mode against enemy AI, is now live and ready for download on the PlayStation Network in both North America and Europe More »