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Namco Bandai Japan has launched a teaser site with a big ol’ X on it. The rest of the page is pretty bare, but we know the publisher is hard at work on a game with a very prominent “X” in the title. I’m not saying for sure that this is related to Tekken X Street Fighter, but the evidence is… you know what, no, I’m saying it. This site is definitely related to Tekken X Street Fighter, I’m sure of it.
Unless I’m wrong, which I could be.
Dennis Dyack, the President of Silicon Knights, recently sat down with GamesIndustry.biz to discuss his company’s legal squabble with Epic Games. He also hinted that the company’s next project, a “next generation” game will be a sequel to one of their most requested properties:
Dyack’s not ready to talk about the next-gen project, but given his comments on Eternal Darkness recently, we have a strong suspicion that Silicon Knights is actually working on the fan favorite.
“We’re really excited and we’re working on our next generation stuff. We’re working on an IP that’s our most requested and we’re really excited about that.”
Interestingly enough, Nintendo reapplied for the trademark to Eternal Darkness in February 2010, making Eternal Darkness 2 a very real possibility. Though it should be noted that Silicon Knights themselves own the trademark to Too Human, so we could also be looking at Too Human 2 (the franchise was planned as a trilogy after all).
Hopefully we’ll find out more at E3.
As you may have noticed from the latest new release report, Konami’s Silent Hill: Book of Memories will be a no-show on store shelves this week. A representative for the publisher confirmed the delay to Ripten:
Unfortunately Book of Memories has been delayed. Stay tuned for a more formal announcement.
Many online retailers, including Amazon and GameFly, have given the game a placeholder date of May 31 (which is a Thursday, definitely meaning its not the real release date). So don’t expect to see Silent Hill: Book of Memories for a while.
No, that’s not a typo. Welcome to the Weekly Warp-Up, your weekly wrap-up of the biggest and the best articles posted at Warp Zoned this week…
Mass Effect 3 was a major topic of conversation again this week as fan and fanboy alike have turned out in droves to debate the merits of Shepard’s final voyage. First came the news that a Mass Effect 3 player filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission about the game’s “terrible” ending. Then came the news that BioWare was actually considering a new ending, which the company’s co-founder confirmed a few days later. So congratulations, Mass Effect 3 is getting a new ending because a small group of people complained loudly enough.
If you’re uninterested in the meta-discussion of the game’s ending, but still love Mass Effect 3, then check out our look at the religious undertones of the series as a whole in The Cross and The Controller: Mass Effect’s Picture of Faith.
And speaking of religious experiences… the “Art of Video Games” exhibit opened last weekend at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and we were there to take it all in including the Pioneers Panel, Hideo Kojima’s panel, thatgamecompany’s meet and greet, and the exhibit itself.
And speaking of game developers, we also reviewed the excellent book Gamers At Work, a series of interviews with some of the biggest names in the development scene, this week.
And speaking of this week, you can read more about it after the jump.
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Naughty Dog Co-President Evan Wells posted the montrosity on the left of your screen to his Twitter feed yesterday.
Mr. or Ms. Exploding Head is what “the infected” will look like in the developer’s next game, The Last of Us. Up until now, the only antagonists we’ve seen for Joel and Ellie have been humans living outside the quarantine zones. But these abominations will be roaming the ruined lands of the USA as well, and it looks like “shoot ’em in the head” won’t be an option.
I don’t think they have any plans to give the bust away to one of their fans, but we can dream can’t we?
The last week of March has hit a rough patch as only a handful of new releases will be available next week:
If you’re like me, you’re probably taking a mulligan on this week. Hopefully, a hole-in-one is in our future, but at least the rest of this week’s new releases can be found after the break.
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Rockstar has announced a new feature for their Rockstar Games Social Club platform that’ll make its debut in Max Payne 3: Crews.
Crews are sort of like clans, except that they’ll exist outside of any individual game. Players will be able to join a Crew in Max Payne 3’s multiplayer mode and they’ll still be a member of that same Crew when future Rockstar games like Grand Theft Auto V, and other “appropriate titles,” are released.
In an interview with IGN, Rockstar’s Vice President of Creativity, Dan Houser, laid down some details on what you’ll be able to do with Crews:
How will Crews be able to interact?
Houser: One major way will be with Feuds. In multiplayer games we have a feature called Vendettas – if someone kills you twice, you can initiate a vendetta against them, which lets everyone know that you’re out to get that person. For you, a special X marks their blip when they’re visible to you on the map. If you take that person down, you get extra XP. If they survive your vendetta though, they get that XP.
Crew Feuds are essentially Crew Vendettas: impromptu skirmishes between crews that can spring up in multiplayer matches that quickly spawn a first-to-10-kills battle. You can be playing any team-based game with a completely new set of players, but if you spot two or more members of a crew you’re feuding with on the opposite team, any kills you get against them will count to the overall feud so rivalries will spring up automatically – and when they do, you’ll be notified and the grudge will come to the forefront of the game.
We’ll track who you’re feuding with, how long you’ve been feuding, and who’s winning. You’ll get extra XP for taking down members of crews you’re feuding with, so you’ll be able to remember those grudges for future matches. Again, we want to create more drama out of the interactions that go down in typical multiplayer matches.
And the beauty of this system is that crews persist over time and across future games. Multiplayer is an ever-more important part of all our games moving forward, and by creating crews through Social Club the crews that you create in Max Payne 3 will be ready and available for you to play in Grand Theft Auto V from day one. It’s all part of our larger approach to make multiplayer deeper and richer than what’s currently available, much more easily accessible to the newcomer and rewarding for the hardcore.
Whoa. Why didn’t anybody think of this before? Max Payne 3 will be available for the PS3 and Xbox 360 on May 15 with the PC version following on May 29.
Morgan Ramsay’s Gamers At Work delivers a lot of behind-the-scenes information about the video game industry right from the source: the mouths of some of the most powerful and influential people involved in starting and fueling it. Ramsay interviews Nolan Bushnell, Don Daglow, Trip Hawkins, Ted Price, Warren Spector, and a dozen other founders, developers, programmers, and entrepreneurs. More than just a dry question and answer session, Ramsay gets to the heart, asking pointed questions and drawing out interesting – and sometimes emotional – stories.
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