This week the news is heavily influenced by what was shown off and announced at the Games Developer Conference.
The stories for this week:
- Kojima Making Another Metal Gear Solid?
- Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time (PS3) and Zelda: Spirit Tracks (DS) Announced
- Modern Warfare 2 Date Announced, Will it Have Call of Duty Title?
- More Wii Punch-Out!! Details Including New Video
- OnLive Announced, Debated
Kojima Making Another Metal Gear Solid?
Heck yeah! Any inkling of a new Metal Gear Solid game gets me excited. I picked Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots as my Game of the Year last year. There simply was not another game that blew me away like that one last year. Anyway, Kojima had a conference on Thursday where he talked about his goals as he’s gone through all the Metal Gear games and how he is still on a quest for the Ultimate Stealth game. He also seemed to indicate that he is looking for a fusion of Eastern and Western game design philosophies to attempt to complete his goal. He left the conference with a graphic up that said, “Mission: The Next MSG” with someone that looks like Raiden on the page. Pretty exciting if you ask me!
Source: Colony of Gamers via Joystiq
Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time (PS3) and Zelda: Spirit Tracks (DS) Announced; Professor Layton 2 Coming to US/Europe
A few interesting game announcements here. The Ratchet and Clank game is a full release, so no PSN download like Quest for Booty was. The game will start up right after Quest for Booty, closing out the trilogy that started with Tools of Destruction. Insomniac is certainly timely on their releases in this series.
The second announcement is a new Zelda game on the DS. It will once again be cel shaded like Phantom Hourglass was and the gameplay looks largely the same as well. This game is supposedly coming this fall, no word on if it will have DSi exclusive stuff or not. Let’s hope not because there are a lot of DS owners out there looking for a game like this.
One last game I want to talk about is that they finally let us know that Professor Layton 2 is coming to Europe and the US later this year. We are currently two games behind the Japanese releases and will soon be three games behind. This game was hot when it came out over here and I can’t wait for the new one. They said it will take about six months to localize it.
Source: multiple
Modern Warfare 2 Date Announced, Will it Have Call of Duty Title?
A date has been set for Modern Warfare 2 from Infinity Ward: November 10th. The big oddity that has come up since the video teaser came out is that the title Call of Duty is nowhere to be found. Could Infinity Ward be moving away from that title and leaving it to Treyarch to continue on with that title. It certainly would make things less confusing since many people feel Treyarch games are not as good as the Infinity War ones. Should be interesting to watch.
Source: Colony of Gamers via Joystiq
More Wii Punch-Out!! Details Including New Video
There’s a new trailer at the link below. The bigger news is that the game will also be compatible with the Balance Board so you can duck and move while punching with the Wii remote and nunchuck. You can also obviously play it via the Wii remote sideways ala the way we played the game on the NES. Although Nintendo didn’t announce the WiiMotion Plus and when it will be available, one has to wonder if this game will utilize that as well. This game comes out May 18th.
Source: Colony of Gamers
OnLive Announced, Debated
People got pretty excited with the unveiling of OnLive, a system that you will use to download and play games from the internet. It sounds a lot like the Phantom system that never came out, but OnLive has some major publishers behind it. The problem is that although they promise latency free gaming, most people are finding that hard to believe and even early looks at the system and how it works produced a lot of latency. The idea sounds cool, I’m just not sure how feasible it will be and if it will actually see mass production or not. You can sign up for a beta coming later this year. I signed up for it, just to see what it is like. This could be the future of gaming, but I really don’t see console makers giving up on that market. Then again, Michael Pachter said this is the last console generation…of course half the things he says is a load of BS, but then again he is an analyst and we know what word is contained in analyst ;)
Source: Colony of Gamers via CNet