Back in July, as many may have forgot, a French games blog suggested a rumor that Kojima Productions might have a December Surprise up its sleeve. December 12th, they said, six months after the release of the game (that length of time, players will note, fitting in nicely with the fiction of Metal Gear Solid 4) might trigger an in-game event.
Kojima’s no stranger to time-based fourth-wall-shattering trickery: one of Metal Gear 3‘s aged boss characters can be secretly defeated by saving in the middle of a fight, exiting out and forwarding your PlayStation clock by a few days, and returning to the game to find him dead from waiting.
All of that’s preface to the widely reported new teaser on Kojima Production’s website which simply reads “A Next Metal Gear is…” accompanied by an image that is surely only coincidentally similar to the green glow of the Xbox 360’s power ring (note: it’s just as similar to the PS3’s own [colorless] power symbol).
We’re as much in the dark as anyone for now, but thought the timing of the new teaser seems oddly serendipitous and worthy of note.
Japan’s game news service Dengeki Online is reporting that Lumines Supernova, the first version of Q Entertainment’s music/puzzle game for the PlayStation 3, will be getting its own LittleBigPlanet skin (that is, music track and accompanying background art). Q hasn’t mentioned which song will make the cut, but we’re hopeful it’s Go! Team’s “Get It Together,” the deliriously cheerful recorder-laden tune.
A number of sites are dubiously reporting that the Lumines game would be playable from inside LittleBigPlanet itself, we’re fairly confident this is not the case. No date has been set yet on Supernova — Dengeki says the game will be available “this winter.”
With Microsoft and Capcom only releasing the Xbox 360 demo for Resident Evil 5 in Japan import-focused blog Siliconera has released a comprehensive guide for the rest of the world to sneak in under the radar and download it for yourself.
The bonus? Once you’ve got your digital paws on it, the demo plays fully in English, and even calls itself Resident Evil versus its rest of the world name, Biohazard.
Right, well, this has instantly become my new favorite web-project: Chris ‘ixalon‘ Warren has pulled some manner of black data-slurping magic (which I’m still trying to piece together, and suspect can’t have come without at least a little assistance from Media Molecule themselves) to create Sackbook, a fully automated social network for LittleBigPlanet.
By visiting Sackbook’s in-game world and leaving a confirmation-code comment on the level, the site will be instantly updated with your friends, hearted levels, and hearted creators, all of which are fully searchable, and accompanied by the photos that get snapped in-game.
It also makes for a much better level browser and discovery tool than flipping through LittleBigPlanet‘s overcrowded and spherical search results, and I suspect will become invaluable as the game evolves and grows as a platform.
Chiptune artist and circuit bender Sebastian Tomczak over at little-scale has figured out a way to turn a Sega Master System II into a real time ‘bitcrusher effect unit.’
Though I’m still reserving judgment about how the just announced DLC for Mirror’s Edge will work without true-life guideposts to get my peripheral bearings, what I do like (apart from the gawpingly beautiful plain shapes they’ve created) is that it’s bringing me warm feelings of Super Mario Sunshine‘s secret “void” levels — pure, self-aware videogame environments that exist for no other reason than to play in.
Watch the trailer for the DLC pack, which will be released in late January (with an exclusive additional map for the PS3) at YouTube.
Following on our earlier post on indie dev Flashbang’s amazingly literal Minotaur China Shop (which we’ve heard well-placed whispers might be crashing about some time next week), the developer has shown a quick preview of their first fully 3D iPhone game, Raptor Copter.
As it sounds, the game will see players snaring raptors with a hooked ball hanging from a transport chopper (in a very similar manner to their PC title Off-Road Velociraptor Safari, just on a different axis) and depositing it in proper raptor receptacle, via, we’d be willing to wager, a tilt-sensitive interface and Flashbang’s signature focus on physics-enhanced play.
The game’s set for a December release, with pricing and more details promised shortly.
Scanning through the entries into the Independent Games Festival mobile game sub-competition pulls up quite a few interesting looking titles this year, including Secret Exit’s Zen Bound, the iPhone version of Zen Bondage, a PC game from demoscene coders Moppi which consists of nothing more than wrapping 3D objects in rope with curiously satisfying results (a perfect fit for the iPhone interface, and one we’ve been patiently awaiting for quite some time).
There’s also and-or’s DS homebrew Wardrive, which turns local wi-fi hotspots into enemies you fend off with the stylus, and the intriguingly artful looking Ruben and Lullaby in which you control the temperature of a lovers’ quarrel by using iPhone motion and gesture controls to anger and calm the couple.
Finally, and unfortunately the one I can find the least additional information on, PSP game Rhythm of War, from Ukrainian team SME Dynamic Systems Ltd (about whom I can only dig up some dubiously Google-translated information, which also seems to suggest they’ve also got a DS sketching game called Pika-Rica). The single screenshot looks like an intriguingly colorful play on Taiko Drum Master with a military unit firing on approaching monsters.
Though we Yanks will have to wait a few months longer, PomPom have announced ahead of Sony that they’ll be making their European PlayStation Network debut next week with Astro Tripper. PomPom’s the team behind the excellent early-XBLA arena shooter Mutant Storm Reloaded and its later scrolling followup Mutant Storm Empire.
Astro Tripper, as RockPaperShotgun pointed out in October, is actually a remake of their earlier Mac gameSpace Tripper, which they describe as more Defender to Mutant Storm‘s twin-stick Robotron-esque play, and looks as though it retains all the dynamism of that shifting flat-field perspective that’s become their hallmark.
As with their earlier games, a PC version should also be due shortly, which might tide us in the U.S. over until 2009.
