The Store is jam-packed this week with a pre-order for Crysis 3 and full game releases like Bayonetta and the Hitman HD Trilogy (each game is also sold separately). There’s also Air Conflicts: Secret Wars, Everyone Sing and Zone of the Enders HD, and GTA: Vice City joins the PS2 Classics.
A few bundles are also hitting the PS Store, so be sure to check them out if you enjoy great deals. Speaking of great deals, there’s a new free PS Mobile game this week – Cubixx. And don’t miss the Madden 13 Sale starting today — just in time for the big game. Check out all the details above!
As always, please leave your thoughts in the comments below. You can also chat about this update in the PlayStation Community Forums.
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Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus (PS Vita)
Air Conflicts Secret Wars
Instant Game Collection — NBA Jam: On Fire Edition
Discount — Section 8: Prejudice
Discount — Madden NFL 13
Discount — Madden NFL 13 (PS Vita)
Discount — escapeVektor (PS Vita)
It’s been a good month for Platinum Games and SEGA titles. Just a few weeks ago saw the release of Anarchy Reigns on PS3; later today will mark the digital release of one of the finest action games ever created. Bayonetta is coming to PSN!
If you have yet to try this iconic action game from the mind of director Hideki Kamiya, your time has come as Bayonetta is debuting at $19.99. Of course, Bayonetta truly shines when you see it in action. So here’s a trip back to the year 2010, when a certain Launch Trailer was just arriving…
Bayonetta is the story of the last remaining member of an ancient clan called the Umbra Witches, a group that has kept the balance between light, dark, and chaos for hundreds of years. Bayonetta awakens after 500 years of sleep to find herself in a world she no longer recognizes, with no clues to her past or how she got where she is.
Her awakening sparks a chain of events that soon reaches cataclysmic proportions. And with a 500 year-old war setting the background of the game and the lines of good and evil blurring fast, Bayonetta needs to discover the secrets of her past and work towards securing her future.
At the core of the game is an amazingly deep combat system, and Bayonetta comes well equipped for battle: wielding four pistols (collectively known as Scarborough Fair) and utilising her infamous fighting style – the ‘bullet arts’ – she’s one big, bad witch you don’t want to make angry.
If you haven’t played Bayonetta and you like action games, I implore you: don’t miss this one. Of course, since I work at SEGA my opinion may be a bit biased, so I’ll leave it to the tried and true fans in the comments to back me up on this.
Hit me up with any questions you have in the comments, and I’ll do my best (as always) to respond to as many as possible. Thanks as always, loyal PlayStation.Blog readers – we hope you’ll enjoy your trip back to Vigrid!
The first thing that should be said when considering the possibility of Platinum Games self-publishing on PC – and that is the exciting future we are considering this morning – is that the company no longer retains the IPs that were originated at Clover Studio, its ancestral home. Those IPs are Okami, GOD HAND, Viewtiful Joe, GOD HAND and GOD HAND. A wiser man than me can tell you why that’s a shame. They do own the rights to Bayonetta though, the game that Devil May Cry occasionally aspires to be, and there’s an abundance of talent and imagination at the studio. So, executive director Atsushi Inaba, take it away: “I was thinking – with our own money – about creating a PC title for Steam.” Do tell.
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As part of our fantastic year-end takeover of the PlayStation.Blog, we wanted to share with you some of Insomniac’s favorite games from 2010. At first, we got a wide variety of responses… as you’ll see below.
ModNation Racers
My choice would have to be ModNation Racers. I played that game all night long, collected all the outfits, stickers, and whatnot, and made a ton of characters. I also posted a few tracks online – “A Night On Bald Mountain” and “Alice In Wonderland.”
-Giac Veltri, Engine Programmer
Rock Band 3
I really enjoy the challenge of playing songs in pro mode. The new keyboard, cymbals, and pro guitar are great additions to a game that was already amazingly fun.
-Herman Miller, Senior Programmer
MineCraft
The experience it gives you, you can’t get anywhere else.
-Joe Valenzuela, Engine Programmer
Super Meat Boy
It is unforgiving, unrelenting and unapologetic. It’ll grind your nose to the ground and make you feel insignificant. It does all this while staying fair to the player, no cheap deaths, and the feedback system showing the player where they jumped, landed and were mutilated by massive-death-blades(TM) creates a comforting and addicting “no, I can do this” feeling in the player.
It not only revels in a past era of super hard games, it refines it to near perfection. Super Meat Boy is everything anyone could ask for from a pure run-and-jump platformer.
-Chaz Wilke, Scripter
Starcraft II
I’m kind of embarrassed that it’s so mainstream, but Starcraft II. This was a surprise for me, since I’d always considered myself no good at RTS games, but apparently that’s all changed as I continue to charge through the Platinum 2v2 league 6 months after its release. It’s definitely an intense yet enjoyable challenge for me, and I love playing Zerg! (I chose to play Zerg for a highly strategic reason: they are adorable.)
-Lisa Brown, Designer
Bejeweled Blitz
My favorite game of 2010 was Bejewelled Blitz on Facebook. Despite a weekly @$$ kicking by my wife I keep coming back for more. (Lead Designer Jake) Biegel bows before me.
-John Fiorito, Chief Operating Officer
Bayonetta
Bayonetta, easily. The game really surprised me with its amazingly fast combat and unique (and kickass) soundtrack. It also had some of the best boss battles I’ve seen this entire generation.
-Scott Michalek, Engine Support Technician
Heavy Rain
Although other games like Mass Effect 2 and Red Dead Redemption captured me for longer periods of time this year, Heavy Rain is the game that most stands out in my mind. I really loved its depiction of fatherhood, a rarity in games. Heavy Rain gave me a new type of experience I hadn’t had before in any other game, and it made me really excited about the possibilities for interactive fiction in future games.
-Joel Bartley, Gameplay Programmer
If you guessed that our writer’s favorite game from 2010 would be the game where you played a writer… well, you’d be right:
Alan Wake
My favorite game of 2010 was Alan Wake. It was dark, atmospheric, with a compelling narrative and a really unique combat mechanic. It also satisfied my insatiable hunger for lumber mill-centric gameplay. As an added bonus, Alan Wake brought to light the gritty truth about writers: that we are all badass action heroes you want to align yourself with should possessed beings ever invade your tranquil summer burg. Unless you’re married to one of us – then you should probably run.
-TJ Fixman, Senior Writer
Sometimes we don’t get to play new games during the holidays, and they slip to the next year. That’s the case with the next couple of selections:
Uncharted 2
I liked the platform/parkour aspects of the level design. If Uncharted 3 has more of the platforming and jumping around I’ll be calling in sick until I complete it.
-Frank Lafuente, Lead Programmer
Dragon Age: Origins
Primary reason is that on my list of favorite game titles it was one of the only new titles, the others being sequels/new installments of a previous franchise.
I think that Dragon Age is an excellent example of bringing old school DnD style RPGs into the current generation. It was refreshing to see them revamp many of the traditional RPG standards while maintaining many of the same themes. It’s also one of few games that really delivers on content and epic story telling.
-Josue Benavidez, Associate Designer
Despite the wide variety of selections, as the response continued to flow in, it was clear that a vast number of Insomniac’s favored one game above all others during 2010: Red Dead Redemption. As our own (in?)famous cos-playing Senior Animator Ben Van Dyken writes:
-Ben Van Dyken, Senior Animator
Other praise for Red Dead Redemption:
As repetitive as many of the quests could be, they created a world I enjoyed being in. They nailed the visuals and sound design of the west, from the time crickets swap with grasshoppers as the primary insect noisemakers to the way dawn casts nearly white light over deserts. The Morricone-esque soundtrack made me feel like I was in a western movie; It just felt good to ride around and experience that world.
Add to that the sheer number of things to do (skill rankings, outfits, primary story missions, mini games, bounty quests, etc) and amazingly entertaining ambient behavior (watching people get mauled from their horses by mountain lions, hearing the prostitutes around town say things like, “I hate to see a dry pecker” and trying to line-up the perfect sniper shot when suddenly being attacked by a Grizzly…) and you had a game that truly defines an era. Would anyone even want to try to make another western game?
Oh, and their “Undead Nightmare” DLC kind of ruined DLC for the rest of us. Best $9.99 I’ve ever spent!
-Marcus Smith, Creative Director on Resistance 3
My love of Spaghetti Westerns was beautifully recreated in this game. I loved the story lines and the fire fights felt like a cross between the Magnificent Seven and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. John Marston, the main character is well defined and carries all the emotion needed to connect with him. Rockstar did an amazing job and they continue to set the bar for sandbox games.
-Carlos De La Torre Jr, Tester
From cattle rustling to coyote wrestling to bandit killing, this game really drew me into its world. Playing co-op with some fellow Insomniacs is also a blast.
-Chris Edwards, Engine Programmer
The level of difficulty in making a Western game of the year is epic – yet they managed to nail it. The level of immersion and gorgeous environments leaves me awestruck – it’s a world that I love just being in.
-Joel Goodsell, Senior Designer
My favorite game of 2010 would have to be Red Dead Redemption. I expected it to be GTA4 with horses, but it turned out to be a sprawling, profound, emotionally moving experience centered around one of the absolute best characters in video games (John Marston). Easily the greatest Western video game ever made, and possibly the greatest Western ever made, period.
-Josh Leman, Tester
Sounds trite, but I loved, loved, loved Red Dead Redemption. I love the desert. I love hiking in the desert, camping, and driving through it. I think the Red Dead team nailed the feeling of the lighting, the topography, and the natural plants and cacti. I’m also a huge fan of westerns, and to me, this was nothing less than the definitive western video game–besides Boot Hill, of course. :)
I’m not sure I’ve seen better looking horses in a game either. It’s the kind of game I like playing just so I can ride around watch the sunset… before I smoke some outlaw gang from their shack. It’s truly a world I feel like I can escape into.
-Steve Ratter, Environment Artist
I loved the openness and the fact that you could finally be a bad-ass gunslinger. First western game to really capture that and it was awesome. And let’s face it, who didn’t always want to skin a bunch of bears.
-Tim Salvitti, Web Developer
So Red Dead Redemption is definitely the favorite pick of Insomniac Games for 2010. Congrats to everyone at Rockstar: San Diego for making such a fantastic game, that sucked up so much of everyone’s time here at Insomniac Games. If you haven’t played it yet, we can’t highly recommend it enough.