Metal Gear Solid: Rising coming 2nd November 2012 - rumour

Leaked Gamestop listings have added fuel to rumours that slicey-dicey Konami spin-off will launch next year - specifically, 2nd November 2012.

Fielded by RamdomProdInc, the release sheet also provides US dates for a number of other high-profile titles, including the new Tomb Raider (13th December 2011) and Final Fantasy XIII-2 (1st January 2012).

Printed on 12th May, the schedule appears to be a little out of date - Mass Effect 3, recently pushed to 2012, is listed for a 2011 release.

Add pinches of salt as desired, readers.

 Source: http://www.oxm.co.uk/28381/metal-gear-solid-rising-coming-2nd-november-2012-rumour/

Another Mass Effect 3 information blowout hits the net

As if the lovely details pulled from an issue of OXM weren’t enough to satisfy your curiosity for Mass Effect 3, a poster over on the BioWare forums has provided readers with some other details gleaned from an issue of Xbox World Magazine.

The information, which we pulled from an updated Mass Effect 3 post over on NeoGAF, has quite few spoilers in it, so if you wish to remain pure and lily white, do not wander off below the break.



Shepard vs Cerberus
According to Xbox World Magazine, the game will contain fewer squad mates this time around as the developers though that 12 was just too many.

“Twelve was a big number in Mass Effect 2 – almost too big”, said Casey Hudson. “We’re focused on a smaller squad with deeper relationships and more interesting interplay in Mass Effect 3. We’re not going to have twelve again but we are going to do more with the characters on your squad including Liara, and Kaidan or Ashley. And we’re bringing everyone back – every main character is in Mass Effect 3 somewhere.”

Characters in the game have had their appearance updated by the same team which created the original characters. Each player will mature a bit especially in the armor department and Garrus’ armor was used as one such example. Shepard has changed quite a a bit as well, especially compared to how his armor appeared in Mass Effect 1. Cerberus heavy troopers will be sporting massive armour, while Assassins will use the same Biotics as Shepard.

Things have changed with Cerberus as well, and it was noted that no matter how you finished Mass Effect 2, Cerberus are now your enemy. Shepard is unsure why at the beginning why Cerberus is sending commandos after him, but he will discover the reason later in the game when the Illusive Man returns.

“You were begrudgingly working for Cerberus in ME2,” said Hudson, “but they’ve gone a bit further and Shepard has returned to the Alliance so Cerberus troops are a major threat.”

“Cerberus Troopers can do everything that Shepard can do now,” added designer Corey Gaspur. “So your fighting a force that’s a lot more punishing.”

“We wanted to make it so that when the player’s fighting in the moment they feel like they have more options than aiming shooting and using powers,” added lead gameplay designer Christina Norman. “We really want to make mobility a factor that plays into combat. You’ll always ask yourself: “Am I in the right position on the battlefield? Where are my enemies? How am I going to get from point A to point B?’

“Players should never be walking into these safe places with great cover and stay there for the whole fight. It’s about how you’re going to move through the battlefield as the enemies through the battefield move through the battlefield and how they’re reacting to one another and to you.”

Location, location, location
While previous article on locations in the game have been talked about already, BioWare confirmed in Xbox World that the Turian homeworld of Palaven and the Quarian homeworld of Rannoch will be new destinations early on in Mass Effect 3.

Players will also be making a return to Tuchanka, and even go on mining missions on a Martian crater, but it will be the cities of Earth which will really standout as the game’s “showpiece locations.”
“The Seatle/Vancouver megacity on the west coast of North America is a truly gigantic space which Shepard will visit before and after the Reapers take it apart,” said level artist Don Arceta. “If you Google Map Vancouver, the layout is pretty much the exact same as our map. Geographically, it’s very true to the real world.

“You play a game like Gears or War and they just have sandbags everywhere, and we really don’t want to do that. We really want to get away from arbitrary things placed just for the people working there, and we’re just trying to really make sense of these spaces. We try to design the arhitecture first before we blow it up, like, really thinking about how did they actually design this building, and does it function well.”

Levels in the game are large, and need to be because players will be participating in a boss fight against a six hundred foot Reaper. The spaces also need to be large so that Shepard can pilot his fifty foot Cerberus Atlas mech later on in the game.

“I think Lair of the Shadow Broker is a good look at how we design levels now,” said Hudson. “It’s all about sudden shifts in the action. There’s a section on Earth where you’re running a narrow walkway and there’s a war going on all around you and a ship is in the distance. Suddenly its nuclear core blows up and its suchs a shockwave that it knocks you off the walkway and you end up sliding down the glass face of a knocked over high-rise and then you kind of roll and catch yourself and all that happens in a moment of gameplay.

“You have control thoughout and that’s when you’ll realise annything could happen at any time.”
According to the development team, the utter scale of Mass Effect 3, including every fight and every enemy, is bigger than anything ever rendered in the Mass Effect universe or by “the Unreal Engine before.”

For the fans
Players new to the Mass Effect universe and just starting out with ME3 can expect to be caught up rather quickly at the beginning of the game.

According to Hudson, the team will implement something similar to what PS3 users received with ME2, but it may not be the same “comic style,” of prequel.

“We’ll do something in the same style to recap the story”, said Hudson. “It’s essentially a really fancy save game generator. The challenge is to make the game better than ever before, to make it a great entry point for new players, and to make it the ending fans deserve. It’s about making sure it starts the way a great story should start versus just being a continuation.

“And thats tough because there is no canon except for what the player has chosen. In the end, its their game.”

Mass Effect 3 will be released during the first three-months of 2012 on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.

Source: http://www.vg247.com/2011/05/11/another-mass-effect-3-information-blowout-hits-the-net/

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations Will Include, Surprise, Major Revelations

Stephen Totilo — To hear the creative director of this fall's Assassin's Creed Revelations put it in a recent interview with Game Informer, the next Assassin's Creed will actually merit its subtitle. Questions will be answered. What kind of questions?
Read on, only if you've played Assassin's Creed II and Assassin's Creed Brotherhood.
Oh, but if you're about to bail, you might at least like to know that Alexandre Amancio also says—possibly stating the obvious—that "Assassin's Creed III will be about another character." The thinking is that each numbered AC game introduces a new assassin: Altair in the first, Ezio in the second, someone new in III.
Okay? Mild spoiler time... run away, unspoiled non-players of ACII and AC:B
In his interview with Game Informer, Amancio says:

We decided in this opus of the franchise to actually give the players a lot of the answers that they've sort of been thirsting for ever since AC II. A lot of things were set up with Minerva, with Juno, a lot of the details about the end-of-the-world plot line in 2012—as we're getting closer and closer to the actual 2012 marker, the franchise is also concluding its major opus. So this game is sort of where we're setting all the record straight. We're sort of closing all of the loops that have been started. .., We're going to reveal not only a lot of stuff about the first civilization plot-line, but we're actually going to conclude the Ezio, the Altair storylines, and we're going to sort of explain why Ezio is such an important character for the franchise, what his actual role is in all of that plotline, what role Altair plays in that destiny, and, ultimately what role Desmond plays in all that stuff.

Experienced players surely realize that this is no small promise. In ACII and AC:B we've had the mysterious god-like Minerva and Juno, both possibly representatives of some precursor civilization on Earth, tell Ezio and Desmond about the impending end of the world. They've said some shifty things that have called into question whether our hero assassin's are doing the right thing.
This is a series that has implied that even Adam and Eve were somehow tied up in the saga that has led to the adventures of all of the Assassin's Creed answers. Those of us who have been playing certainly have a lot of questions. We're actually getting answers in Revelations? That's a welcome surprise.
Check out the rest of GI's video with Amancio for more details about how Revelations is being made and about his intriguing goals of improving the series convergence of narrative and gameplay. He's set some lofty goals.
Assassin's Creed: Revelations: Meet The Creative Director [Game Informer 218]

Source: http://kotaku.com/5800970/assassins-creed-revelations-will-include-surprise-major-revelations

Revelations about Revelations

Got my new Game Informer yesterday and the AC: Revelations article definitely has me excited. Here is my quick recap of the article. I’ll Try and get Scans up later



- This will be the biggest AC yet! If you thought Rome was huge in Brotherhood, this is supposed to slightly dwarf that.

- Besides Ubi Montreal who has handled all the entire series they had to enlist the help of Ubi France, Ubi Quebec, Ubi Sweden, Ubi Singapore, and Ubi Bucharest in Romania. Hopefully a big team means big things

- Constantinople is the setting during the Ottoman Empire

- Constantinople is split into a few districts: Constantin, Beyazid, Imperial, Galata, Cappadocia, and Masyaf returns! (AC: 1)

- Important characters you will meet: Suleiman (in history becomes Suleiman the Magnificent), Ahmet, Sofia Sorto, Manuel Palaeologos

- You will play as Ezio who has gotta be in his 50’s at this point, Altier, and Desmond

- New weapons, most notiably the hook blade will which allow for new ways to free run, climb, and engage in combat

- Small scale crafting system to be introduced, for those of you familiar with collecting the random items that came out of chest with the money in Brotherhood, you will now be able to use those items to craft bombs

- According to Ubi there will be +/- 300 types of bombs you can create using different items, each bomb will have a unique effect, and you can create the ones you like that best fit your play style

- There are now ziplines around the world that you can latch onto with the hook blade to help you traverse roof tops.

- The battle system has been adjusted again, now during combat your bombs, and secondary weapon (gun, throwing knives) will be mapped to their own buttons allowing for interesting combos

- The hook blade can be used to grab enemies when in a fight to start a combo instead of having to wait for them to attack and counter

- You’re assassin’s guild will return! This time you can rank them up to level 15 Master Assassin instead of level 10 Assassin

- There are Dens similar to the Borgia Towers that will need to be over taken in order to upgrade areas and establish hideouts for you and your assassin’s

- Different from the Borgia towers, once you capture a den at any given time the templars may try to take it back, you will have to defend it to keep your strong hold on the area.

- Side missions will occur within the world and flow more fluidly, you may be attacked while roaming, someone may scream for help when you walk by etc. You can choose to ignore and continue on or engage and do the side mission

- Multiplayer will be adjusted and made more robust, new modes, character models, faster match making, more customization. More of a storyline given to the multiplayer. They made it sound like there may be a mode based around missions like the single player so it sounds like co-op to me which would be a WIN!

- This will be the end of Ezio’s journey. Ubi promises to answer lingering questions i.e. closing out Altiers story, bringing Ezio’z journey to an end, explaining the ending of Brotherhood etc.



- Basic Plot revolves around Ezio taking a journey back to Masyaf to study more on Altier and decide if he made the right choices in life, he is basically soul searching, upon his return he finds Masyaf over run by templars. He finds out there is something hidden in Masyaf that the templars are trying to obtain. This object will give the templars the power to defeat the assassins so of course he goes on a journey to get to it first. There are 6 keys to open the secret location, 5 of which are hidden in Constantinople, and one the templars have already secured. Ezio has to find the 5 and of course learn who is keeping the 6th and obtain it as well. Interesting enough these keys will kind of act as an animus inside the animus. This will lead to the Altier parts of the game which will bring more answers to the cliffhangers we were left with in AC:1, and also help Ezio understand more about himself.



- *SPOILER ALERT* If you have not finished Brotherhood STOP!!! I will be vague as possible here…..



- Playing as Desmond will be based upon the state he ended the last game in. His levels you will traverse his subconscious and also explore what is being called the “ black room”, its similar to the all white room you are placed in during loading screens. Its said to think of this as him going into safe mode after the way Brotherhood ended. Going through his subconscious and solving puzzle will be key to bringing him up to speed from where he left off in Brotherhood lol



I am sure there are a few details I missed as it was big article but these are the key points. I will read again and update with any information I feel fans of the series will be interested in that I may have by passed. Assassin’s Creed Revelations is due out this November.

Source: http://www.thegamerstudio.com/upload/entry.php?43-Revelations-about-Revelations

Rumour - Tomb Raider Will Be Release On 13 December 2011

According to a user on tombraiders forum, GameStop's manager show a list of upcoming games which revealed that Tomb Raider was on the list for 13 December 2011. Beside that an email from the leading GameStop company confirming it with a source from Square Enix themselves. While some of other titles were aslo leaked along with it, which including MGS: Rising, FFXIII-2.

If that turns out to be true then the new Tomb Raider will be another new challenger of GOTY 2011.

Source: http://www.gamenyusu.com/component/content/article/8-all-news/485-rumour-tomb-raider-will-be-released-on-13-december-2011.html

Final Fantasy XIII-2 release date confirmed

Square Enix has published FY2011 results and it contains a lot of interesting details. Among other things they’ve confirmed the release dates for title which will be releasing this year. Among them, Final Fantasy XIII-2 is also mentioned.

They’ve marked the title for a “Winter 2011″ release in North America and Europeand just a “2011″ release in Japan.

Final Fantasy Type O’s release date is marked as “Summer 2011″ for Japan.
The image contains all planned release dates for Enix’s titles for this year.

Source: http://www.gamersmint.com/final-fantasy-xiii-2-release-date-confirmed

Playstation Network Has A Pulse. Service Could Be Online Soon

It looks like the Playstation Network has a pulse.

Although Sony have been noticeably mute the last few days and haven’t updated us on when we can expect the service to come back online, it is being reported that the internal Playstation Network developer network is back online.

NeoGAF forum member Kagari revealed today that, “The internal PSN developer network is online again, at least it seems for some.” Kagari continues, “Looks like the full network, at least the online play/account part of it, will be back soon.”

Could this be an indication of the return of the network? Let’s hope so.

Source:  http://thegamingliberty.com/index.php/2011/05/13/playstation-network-has-a-pulse-service-could-be-online-soon/