Prince of Persia Producer Ben Mattes took the time to answer several interesting questions regarding everything from combat to the game’s new art style on PlayStation 3. Here are some of them as follows:
Charliesdad asked: Wondering how you addressed the balance issues from earlier entries in the series. For example, Sands of Time was amazing, but going back to it recently the combat wore thin after a while (especially in the first big group fight) to be followed by long stretches of almost no combat. Does the new game fall on one side or the other or is there a middle ground that you all shot for and hit? And Demo tomorrow? Maybe?
Mattes: First, one of our main goals in combat was to make every fight grandiose and meaningful, to make every encounter feel more epic. Thus, we decided to make the new combat system a duel mode in which every enemy has special attributes, a unique personality, cool moves, and his strengths and weaknesses. ... More »
This week marks the end of the brutal end-of-year release period. We're ending on a high note with Prince of Persia's worldwide release.
We've been looking forward to this one for quite some time, so hopefully it'll live up to expectations. Here's the full release list:
US Games
• SingStar ABBA
• Prince of Persia (free Limited Edition upgrade)
EU Games
• Prince of Persia
• Brain Challenge
Asian Games
• Brain Challenge
• Prince of Persia
• Pro Yakyuu Spirits 5 Kanzenban
• Saints Row 2
PS3 games are region free, so go ahead and import any games you fancy. Try to keep in mind, however, that DLC is always region locked. So your US game will only read content downloaded from the US PSN Store.
Finally, Prince of Persia has been confirmed to have DLC coming in the future. Release dates are constantly subject to change, so ch... More »
Earlier this week, Famitsu Weekly confirmed that a demo of Capcom's highly anticipated Resident Evil 5 would be coming to the Japanese XBox Live Marketplace on December 5.
Confusion arose as to whether the demo would be limited to Japan and only the XBox Live Marketplace.
Capcom, however, has confirmed that the demo will be appearing on both the PSN and XBox Live Marketplace, and in all major regions as well.
The demo, however, will not be launching simultaneously worldwide, and as of right now, there is no word on the western release date.
To quote via PlayStation Underground: Tomorrow, we are releasing a new version of PlayStation Home called PlayStation Home 1.0. This version will add some exciting new features and fix several known bugs, preparing us for launch into Open Beta. You can find the full list of new features below.
Highlights include new emotes and dance moves for avatars, new arcade games, new ways to launch into games from PlayStation Home, a new game rewards system, and much, much more! We think you’ll enjoy these many changes and improvements.
Home will be down for a period of time tomorrow to prepare for the launch of Version 1.0. I will let you know in the forums when it is back up.
We will be inviting a tremendous number of new beta testers soon, and conducting a massive load test this Friday night, November 21st. We will have an event to celebrate the moment. Stay tuned for further information as your assistance with this event is greatly appreciated.
More »
There's general agreement that Sony stumbled out of the gate with the PlayStation 3. Months of intense hype were followed by a late launch (fully a year after the Xbox 360) and a staggering $600 price tag for the deluxe model.
Even worse, the PS3 didn't initially have any real must-have exclusive titles, and despite the power of its vaunted Cell processor, multiplatform games from third-party developers didn't look appreciably better than the respective titles on the Xbox 360.
Since then, the company's been modifying the PlayStation product line to better fit the competitive market landscape. As of August 2008, a new "bargain" PS3 is available with a larger, 80GB hard drive, and a "deluxe" model is due in November, doubling the capacity to 160GB.
Both, however, lack backward compatibility with PS2 games and do not come with flash card readers. If those features are a must, it might be best to pick up the 80GB "Metal Gear" bundle version on eBay w... More »
Looks like the New Xbox Experience dashboard update is experiencing some not-so-new Xbox woes. November 19: launch day for the NXE update. Not 24 hours after it went live, complaints
are already piling up.
Various forums online (such as the one linked above) have threads and threads of people reporting anything from connection freezes, slow downs, lock ups, broken TV connections, and so many other different numerical errors that, if all of them were strung together, could potentially measure all the way from Earth to the moon (and back).
There are even reports of brickage - yes, the famed red ring of death is back. Some say it's limited to modded consoles only (no surprise there) but other untainted units seem to be affected by the same problem too.
We've yet to hear any official response from Major Nelson or any of the Microsoft staff. Some say the slow downs are caused by the simple fact of surging traffic accessing XBL, but the oth... More »
The guys over at Mgestyk Technologies have been playing and come up with a pretty awesome melding of gaming technology dubbed Mgestyk Fusion, currently available for Windows XP and Windows Vista.
To quote the link above: If you've tried games like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and the recent Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Lightsaber Duels on the Wii, you may have been disappointed that the in-game lightsaber does not always match how you are holding the wiimote.
Introducing Fusion from Mgestyk Technologies: Fusion is a patent-pending technology which combines Mgestyk's gesture processing with other sensor data such as from Nintendo's wiimote.
It looks pretty cool to me. It's a shame we won't see it on the PS3 until either someone hacks it for homebrew or Sony buys Nintendo. :)
Continued: We'll be demoing this at MIGS next week along with some of th... More »
Today MCV (linked above) has published a number of quotes from UK industry leaders who all reach the same conclusion - the PS2 is standing on its last legs and is effectively dead.
The MD of MasterSonic noted that the PS2 market has been virtually killed overnight, while a major international publisher noted this will be the last Christmas for the PS2 and the company won't support it next year.
To quote: MD of Mastertonic Andy Payne – whose Blast label has enjoyed impressive sales during the PS2’s twilight years – believes the system is on its last legs, thanks to limited space on the High Street.
He told MCV: “The PS2 market has been virtually killed overnight. There’s been no real run-off like with the PSOne, and that’s because retail just does not have the space.”
Do you still have a PlayStation 2, and if so do you still play it? Feel free to comment below!
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