MotorStorm RC for PSN and PS Vita

Via PlayStation Blog:

+ Posted by Paul Rustchynsky // Game Director, MotorStorm RC

I’m delighted to be able to announce – and show a trailer for – MotorStorm RC, Evolution Studios’ upcoming radio controlled off-road racing game for PS Vita and PlayStation Network. It was also announced literally moments ago on stage – so it’s absolutely hot off the press!

You can watch first video of MotorStorm RC in action here.

I’ve been game director to a small, elite team at Evolution Studios for most of the year, creating a simulation of high-speed radio-controlled car racing for PSN download. We’re extremely pleased with how the game is coming together; it’s a perfect combination of classic racing with really modern connectivity features and it’s already bigger than your average download game, with visually stunning renditions of all four MotorStorm worlds (and eight of their vehicle classes). Every aspect of the game comes loaded with endless competition that you can share with friends and rivals worldwide – whether that’s on PS3 or PS Vita, or both – and we’re still packing it full of challenges, race types and features too!

Everyone who has played MotorStorm RC so far says it really gets you hooked, with an addictive, hypnotic core experience – just like the best arcade games. Also like the best arcade games, stages take just moments to load, giving it that ‘just one more go’ quality, especially when you can play at home on PS3 and then continue your progress on the go with Vita.

And it’s still early days! We’ve got a lot more lined up and we’ll share all of it with you as the game comes together, but for now please check out our trailer and some of the killer features in MotorStorm RC!

Off-Road Racing on a New Scale

Conquer the most extreme racing environments in powerful radio-controlled vehicles, with hundreds of uniquely customized models to collect and performance based on 8 distinct racing categories: Buggies, Superminis, Rally Cars, Muscle Cars, Racing Trucks, Supercars, Big Rigs and Monster Trucks!

Four Classic Locations, 16 Unique Tracks

Experience the simultaneous challenge and excitement of racing in the world’s most extreme environments, from the dusty desert mesa’s of Monument Valley, to the dangerous jungles of a Pacific island, to the icy tundra at the Arctic Edge, to the apocalyptic ruins of an urban city.

Settle Rivalries Anytime, Anyplace

Challenge friends and the rest of the world to compete for the fastest times in every event – whether that’s on PS3 or PS Vita, or both.

Share Every Moment

Share every moment with your friends and make new friends via the Pitwall. Keep tabs on their activity – so you always know when there’s a new challenge or a new leader – and you can always stay one step ahead of the competition.

Four-Player Multiplayer on PS3

Settle the score with your friends in person with 4 player split-screen races.

Pay Once, Get Both

It’s the same experience on both PS3 and PS Vita, and picking up the game on PS3 will give you full access to the game on PS Vita (and vice versa) – so if you own both you can carry your progress between the two, and always pick up where you left off.

Players in the US can look forward to the release of Motorstorm RC on the PS3 and PS Vita next spring. We definitely will have more details to share throughout the coming months, so continue to check back here in the PlayStation.Blog!

Deploying at Vita Launch: Zipper’s Unit 13

Via PlayStation Blog:

+ Posted by Brian Soderberg // President, Zipper Interactive

On behalf of the entire team at Zipper Interactive, I am proud to announce a new shooter, Unit 13, designed from the ground up for the new PlayStation Vita. It’s been very exciting developing a game for the first portable console with precision dual analog sticks, the perfect platform for a fast action, hard-hitting, third-person shooter like Unit 13. In addition, Vita’s front and back touch interface provided a unique and fun way to interact quickly with in-the-world elements of the game.

Fast action, on-the-go gameplay was a key goal for the Unit 13 team. The game is designed for players to move quickly into the action, choosing from one of six Operatives with unique abilities to tackle 36 action-packed missions across nine unique locales. Missions come in a variety of sizes and difficulty. Some are smaller bite-sized battles; others are longer, more challenging, multi-objective missions that are a good test for any skilled shooter fan. As you make your way through the variety of missions, you unlock the right to take on the tougher High Value Target (HVT) enemy battles. After completing an HVT mission, you can share them with friends and nearby players through PlayStation Vita’s “NEAR” feature.

The Zipper team put considerable effort into leveraging Vita’s WIFI and 3G functionality to provide exceptional social gaming and competition with friends and opponents from around the world. Unit 13’s live notification interface, enabled through 3G, keeps players up to date on leaderboard positions, new “Daily Challenge” content, new unlocks, shared High Value Target missions, and challenges from friends as they move past you on the leaderboards.

In Co-op, you can play Unit 13 with a friend all with high quality voice chat enabled through the PlayStation Vita. Coop teams compete for top positions on the global, regional, and friend mission leaderboards.

We’re super excited for all of you to give Unit 13 a try. We believe it’s the perfect portable shooter on the best portable gaming platform, the PlayStation Vita. And it’s available right around Vita launch!

See you on the leaderboards!

PlayStation Vita gets a content management app, plays nice with PS3 and PC

Via Engadget:

By Sean Buckley posted Nov 13th 2011 12:56AM

Worried your PlayStation Vita is going to be so full of repurchased PSP content that you won't be be able to store it all? Yeah, neither are we -- but if you want another place to keep your Vita's picture, video, music and game content, Sony says your PC and PS3 will do nicely. An application page on the Japanese PlayStation website details a Vita app that lets users transfer data between the three platforms, noting that content can be purchased on the PC or PS3, and then transferred to the Vita for use later. Gamers looking to save scratch on that not-so-optional memory card will be able to use this content sharing feature to get the most out of whatever size storage they can afford. Sure, 4GB of storage the cheapest Vita memory card offers isn't ideal, but at least Sony is throwing you a bone to make it work.

Joystiq

PlayStation (Japan)

Ouch, that looks like it hurt!

Via Hardcore Gaming 101 Blog:

Getting injured in video games is usually inconsequential. The hero loses a chunk of his health bar, maybe bleeds a little on the floor, but as soon as he's dealt with the enemy and marches on, you'd never be able to tell he's just been perforated by a gunload of hollow point bullets. Or take the amazon warrior, who needs no protection aside from her metal bikini, as her skin proves just as impenetrable as the steel her risque fashion choice is made of.

There's various reasons for that. Of course technical and workload limitations are always an issue, but aesthetic choice probably also spared us beaten-up, teethless brawler protagonists and RPG love interests covered in scars and bruises. Less superficial accounting for wounds also brings extraordinary game design challenges: How much fun is it being a platformer hero with a realistically depicted broken leg?

That doesn't mean that no one has ever tried showing us players what's going on with our alter egos on the screen. Here is a look at games that went through the lengths of visibly abusing their characters for our enjoyment. While there are tons of cars, tanks, planes and mechas that have been torn to shreds in the history of video games, we're only looking at characters of pixellated or polygonal flesh and blood. Gratuitous death animations aren't enough to qualify, either—characters have to live with their injuries, at least until the next health pack shows up.



Ghosts 'n Goblins (1985)

In the old days of low resolution and few colors, wounds on a player character simply wouldn't have been recognizable as such. There weren't many pixels left in between Arthur's beard and his helmet to make any scratches identifiable, so to show that he's now more vulnerable after a hit, the clever pixel artist at Capcom just took away his armor, leaving him running around in his underpants. A second hit then will leave nothing but hsi crumbling bones. This mechanic lives on in the game's various sequels, and is even picked up for the series reboot Maximo (2002). Capcom's own Black Tiger (1987) and Natsume's Pocky & Rocky 2 (1994) work similarly, too. (picture right: Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts, GBA; below: Maximo)



Super Mario Bros. (1985)

Released just a little bit later than Ghosts 'n Goblins, Super Mario Bros. shows another workaround for the fact that Mario's face can't take any more red pixels beside his cap and moustache. When he gets hurt, he simply shrinks in size. One could argue about the eligibility of this example, though. In the original, the small size appears to be his natural state. In Super Mario Bros. 2 (1988, pictured), however, Mario starts out big, and in the later 3D games that drop the feature, he's no dwarf, either.


Gladiator (1986)

Fighting games seem to be the predestined genre for this. But fighting game characters also start out with stripping their clothes instead of ripping their flesh. Hits on the different parts of a characters' armor will make them fall off, another hit on the now unprotected part kills. It is interesting to note how at least the Japanese version knew no discrimination of the sexes and shows the female warrior just as bare-chested as her male counterparts.

Developer Allumer refined the concept with their 1992 game Blandia, and it has since been imitated in various other, predominantly Japanese, fanservice-y fighting games like Fighting Vipers (1995) and Soul Calibur IV (2008), not to name all those Doujin strip fighters. Many gamers have been very curious what pieces of armor Ivy was supposed to lose.








Art of Fighting (1992)

NOW we're talking! Art of Fighting is the first game were players really can beat each other's faces to pulp. Towards the end of the fight, both combatants are often hardly recognizable, anymore. The game also became infamous because Yuri and King could get their shirts blown off when finished with a fireball attack, which carried over into the first King of Fighters games. Art of Fighting 2 works in the same way, but unfortunately SNK dropped the feature for the 3rd episode.


Time Killers (1992)

In the wake of Mortal Kombat came this new epitome of bad taste. The game featured fatalities just like its role model, but character's arms could also be severed during combat, forcing them to go on with a limited moveset. Continued with Bloodstorm (1994), where combatants could also go on without their legs, skidding over the floor on their intestines.


Wolfenstein 3D (1992)

Most first person shooters automatically disqualify for this list because... well, because you never get to see your character. Wolfenstein 3D circumvented this issue by placing the head of hero Blascovich into the on-screen display, where you can see it growing bloodier and bloodier the lower your health gets. id used the same feature in Doom (1993), and the animated mugshots were also adopted by the later Might & Magic games.


Robinson's Requiem (1994)

Another first person game, but Silmaril's science fiction retelling of Robinson Crusoe befittingly is a survival adventure. Visible damage comes into play on the player character's profile, which is used to apply bandages, makeshift splints and medication. This game is one of the rare occasions where your health also affects your general performance. As an extreme, your character literally goes blind when birds hack at his eyes! Continued with the sequel Deus (1996), which also adds an infrared view with your skeleton. Both games are available bundled at GOG.com. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth (2005) features a simplified variant, so does Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (2004), although the latter without visually showing the damage.




Götzendiener (1994)

As our first example of story-driven damage, Götzendiener falls back to the old hurting=stripping formula. The heroine in this very short game starts out in cpativity of a demon. A knight in shining armor comes to rescue her, but dies together with his foe. No longer under watch, the resolute damsel takes her rescue into her own hands, losing parts of her garments with each chapter.

Many later games have taken the same approach: Die Hard: Arcade (1996), Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2003), Heavy Metal: FAKK 2 (2000). The latter has the heroine frequently changing her attire to counteract to the textile decay, which doesn't mean she's gonna show less skin that way, as her outfits just get skimpier and skimpier.






Resident Evil (1996)

Capcom's horror shocker didn't modify Chris' or Jill's models or textures to show how grave their condition is, but the animation. Injured zombie hunters started limping, which also made them significantly slower.

Kinda adopted by Silent Hill (1999), only Harry Mason always runs like he's just been shot in the foot.


Super Mario 64 (1996)

One of the innovators of the category makes his return. Mario doesn't shrink anymore, but when he's at the last quarter of his health, he's visibly out of puff. This becomes a very popular feature in cartoony 3rd person games, even just on the N64: Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon (1997), The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Conker's Bad fur Day (2001) ... the list goes on.

This has also been seen in 2D games like Mega Man X4. Do you know any examples that predate Super Mario 64?


Deathtrap Dungeon (1998)

The game that motivated this post. From my article on the title: "There is, however, one really cool feature that got dropped in the conversion [to the PSX]: On the PC, all the damage the adventurers took would show on their body. You see their bruises, cuts — even arrows keep sticking in their flesh until healed." 'nuff said...


Jurassic Park: Trespasser (1998)

Almost doesn't count, because it's not actually the heroine's body that changes appearence, just the tatoo on her chest gets tainted red.


Illbleed (2001)

Another interesting variant on cloth damage, and also a really surprising twist on New Game Plus. Eriko has to rescue her friend from a cursed amusement park, but whenever she fails and one of her friend dies in a second playthrough, her clothes get ripped apart a little more, posing a real moral dillemma for the young male player. If you really screw up, in the end she'll be covered by nothing more than smears of mud and three tiny shreds of cloth at three laughably convenient spots.


Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus (2003)

Possibly the first fighting game to bring Art of Fighting's approach into the third dimension, the failed comeback of a former Mortal Kombat developer featured quite impressive damage ranging from cuts, dirt and bruises to torn clothes.


Fable (2004)

Fable sure as hell didn't go for short-lived diversions. In Peter Molineux' most persistent obsession yet, you don't get a love interest, you get spouses—lots of them. And you don't get merely injured, you get scars. By the second game those were the least of your worries, though, as skilled characters automatically turned into monstrous beings suffering from gigantism and shiny blue varices all over their body.


Fight Night 2004 (2kduh!)

As a genre were endurance is one of the deciding factors for victory, sports games simulated fatigue in some way or the other since 8-bit times, with slower movement, weaker passes or whatever. With growingly powerful hardware, especially wrestling and boxing games started to go to great lengths to convey how exhausted the combatants got. The most excessive example yet is the Fight Night series, where characters not only get cuts, black eyes and bruises, but also sweat like pigs and start dribbling when they've no energy left in their bodies. (picture below: Fight Night Round 4)




Oneechanbara (2005)

"You're bleeding!"
"Don't worry, that's not my blood."

The girls of the Bikini Samurai Squad turn into a bloody mess when they hurt others. Zombies bleed all over them with their cursed blood, eventually forcing them into a murderous frenzy. They also occasionally have to shake the blood of their swords, lest they become useless. Particularly tasteless: Some of the games offer settings to vary the color of the blood, white being one of the possible choices. It looks naughty.


Retro Game Challenge / Game Center CX: Robot Ninja Haggleman (2007)

Although it is predominantly a hommage to Ninja Jajamaru-kun, the fake-classic action platformer series also contains a nod to Ghosts 'n Goblins—only the little ninja doesn't lose his armor, instead is eyes bulge out. The spin-off Haggleman - Koume Version on Game Center CX: Arino no Chousenjou 2 features the ninja's sister, who has her arm in a sling after a hit.


Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009)

Actually another entry from the Götzendiener school, but nonetheless deserving of its own entry, because Batman also gets scratched here and there, and grows awesome stubble on his chin over the course of this longer-than-planned mission.


Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe (2008) and Mortal Kombat (2011)

You'd think that the one series so famous for its sadistic treatment of its characters would have jumped the train earlier, but up to Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe, characters may have lost gallons of blood, but they could only really be injured—and instantly killed—with Fatalities. The 2011 reboot goes one step further with x-ray vision for special combos.


The 3rd Birthday (2011)

Another stripping game, only here Aya Brea's clothing status is directly tied to her health. She can lose an impressive amount of fiber, but scratch marks also prove the monsters didn't just want to see her naked.


El Shaddai (2011)

It may be the shittiest high-profile game of this console generation, in El Shaddai instead of a health bar you see your armor cracking and shattering, revealing that the protagonist doesn't actually have huge man-boobs.


Tomb Raider (2012)

In Tomb Raider Underworld, the grave robbing brit could already get wet and dirty. (No, not what you're thinking!) Now trailers of the new reboot show a very beaten-up Lara Croft soaked in blood. It remains to be seen how it will all work out in the game, though.



Screenshots taken from Strategy Informer, GameFAQs and GOG.com.

Posted by derboo at 8:03 PM

SOPA Sponsors Break Their Own Law

Via TorrentFreak:

• Ernesto
• November 17, 2011
• 17
• sopa
• Print
• 
  

Here’s a classic.

Remember how the Stop Online Piracy Act would make streaming of copyrighted material a felony?

How it could lead to a 5 year jail sentence?

Well it turns out that the sponsors of the bill aren’t too worried about this prospect.

As dkesh notes on Reddit, many of these lawmakers actually stream copyrighted videos on their websites.

Hypocrites?

Without going into detail whether fair use would apply, or if there’s another loophole through which they could be allowed to do this, I can only conclude that this is just plain stupid .

The worst part is that it shows you that the people who can sign this bill into law have absolutely no idea what they are doing.

Unbelievable.

This post is from the News Bits section of TorrentFreak where we present stories from around the web in a concise summary format. Full TorrentFreak articles can be found here. If you have a tip please let us know. News Bits have their very own RSS feed

Killzone 4 Is Under Development

Via PlayStation4.net:

Posted In PlayStation 3 News - By Sony PS4 On Friday, November 18th, 2011 With 0 Comments

EDGE is reporting that Killzone 4 is in development at Guerilla Games.

According to the magazine “the bulk of Guerrilla’s staff (is soldiering) on with the next Killzone instalment.”

Killzone 2 and 3′s Senior Producer Steven Ter Heide is added as the game director.

Guerrilla’s studio recruiter Adrian Smith said that “we’ve got to continue the Killzone franchise”, and suggesting that the new Killzone has been in development.

UT archive preserving video game history

Via Statesman:

Earlier this year, Austin attorney Richard Anton was looking to get rid of his old, unused Apple II Plus computer.

Then his wife found out about the University of Texas' Videogame Archive, an effort to preserve gaming history that was started three years ago by some of the godfathers of the Austin gaming scene.

Anton ended up donating the computer and a stack of software to the archive, which operates as part of the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History.

An intern got the computer working and used it to play a copy of "Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress," which was created by Richard Garriott, one of the aforementioned godfathers.

"I'm glad it's working, and I'm glad there's some interest in it," said Anton, who said he spent about $3,500 for the computer and assorted peripherals in the early 1980s.

Since the archive started in 2007, thanks to the efforts of Garriott and fellow gaming legends Warren Spector and George Sanger, a music composer, the center has amassed more than 1,500 video games and about 200 linear feet of design documents, game proposals, internal correspondence and concept art, as well as much more, said digital archivist Zach Vowell.

The collection includes e-mails from Spector discussing the production of his acclaimed cyberpunk game, "Deus Ex," which was released in 2000.

Those e-mails reveal an incredible amount of detail regarding the production of the game, Vowell said.

"You call tell with ‘Deus Ex' that they really thought hard about every aspect of the game, and it showed in the end," he said.

There's also a copy of "Akalabeth: World of Doom," Garriott's first video game. It's still in one of the plastic bags Garriott used to package his games that he sold more than 30 years ago.

"State-of-the-art publishing back then was a Ziploc bag," said Garriott, who donated a trove of his own documents to the collection and plans to give more.

In the quickly evolving art form of gaming, source material from early developers can be an important learning tool for future generations, he said.

"I think it is really important that, while we still have our fingers on some of that early material — and importantly, some of those early creators are still around to talk about it — it's very valuable to try to capture as much as possible," Garriott said.

Preserving gaming history is more important now than ever, said Billy Cain, a gaming industry veteran who is chief creative officer at Lakeway-based Sneaky Games.

Cain donated items from his collection of video games, consoles, game magazines, strategy guides and design documents.

"It's the right thing to do," he said.

With games becoming more and more mainstream, "it seemed more important than ever to provide some grounding, and where things came from," he said.

And while the collection is very Austin-heavy, Vowell recently got an unexpected call from the attorney for David Rosen, a former CEO of Sega Corp., a pioneering game and console maker. Rosen donated some late 1980s-era Sega Genesis console systems and games.

Archiving video game history can be a tricky process, because obsolescence is a huge problem. Many of the old computers, consoles and operating systems used to play the earliest video games are simply no longer around.

For instance, the 1962 game "Spacewar!" exists on a punched paper tape, which requires a PDP-1 computer, according to the report "Preserving Virtual Worlds," by a team of researchers led by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

But, to the best of those researchers' knowledge, there's only one functioning PDP-1 computer left in the world.

"The fate of the paper tape of ‘Spacewar!' is the fate awaiting all games without the active intervention of preservationists," wrote principal investigator Jerome McDonough of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

"A book may pass 50 years on a shelf and still be readily accessible; rapid technological change and the resulting obsolescence of the technology necessary to access software mean that a computer game will not," McDonough wrote.

Vowell says that archivists are still pondering the obsolescence problem. But ideally they would like for researchers to be able to play the actual games that they're studying, he said.

In a way, the video game archive is a good fit with the Briscoe Center, which is known for its Texas history collections, Vowell said.

"This kind of stuff, you don't think it would fit together immediately, but I think it does make sense, because it is local history," he said. "And the role that the game business played in Austin's development ... it was pretty substantial."

bgaar@statesman.com; 912-5932