Video Games Daily News Digest

I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand how PlatinumGames came up with the insane idea of a hair-wielding witch as the main character of their forthcoming actioner. But, I walked away a little less dumbfounded after watching Bayonetta Revelations Chapter 1 above, their first in a series of developer diaries leading up to the game’s North American and European release in January.

The video features game director Hideki Kamiya and producer Yusuke Hashimoto discussing everything from character origins to enemy design and weapon customization. The game has already received a warm welcome from Japanese critics and will arrive in the US on January 5 and Europe on January 8.

He didn’t really want to get dragged into it, but Quantic Dream’s founder and co-CEO David Cage has revealed his belief that the PlayStation 3-exclusive Heavy Rain wouldn’t be possible on any other system.

Speaking during his Developer Session at today’s Eurogamer Expo in London, Cage was responding to a question from one of the attendees following a demonstration of the game. After a bit of a pause and an audible sigh, Cage said, “Whatever I answer, my answer will be suspicious… Honestly, I don’t think so. I think it had to be on PlayStation 3 for two main reasons: the hardware, the architecture of the PS3 is extremely powerful in the way it is structured. If you make a real PS3 engine, then you can have really fantastic performances. If you try to port from another platform, then it becomes difficult.”

Cage continued, “This is a console we all love at the studio. I play PSOne, PS2, it’s really a part of my culture. The controller is part of my home… and it’s a really, really powerful console. I’m not so much into graphics, to be honest with you, I don’t believe you need ultra realistic graphics to get emotion, you can get that with very low graphics. But we wanted to create emotion from believable characters, that was the idea. With this approach PS3 was by far the best platform.”

Those who have modded their Xbox 360s have just received a rude awakening, courtesy of Microsoft. The company has once again taken action on users playing pirated games, suspending their accounts from Xbox Live.

“We have taken action against a small percentage of consoles that have been modified to play pirated game discs. In line with our commitment to combat piracy and support safer and more secure gameplay for the more than 20 million members of our Xbox LIVE community, we are suspending these modded consoles from Xbox LIVE,” a Microsoft rep told IGN, adding that everyone should know piracy is illegal and that modifying one’s console goes against Xbox Live’s terms of use.

“The health of the video game business depends on customers paying for the genuine products and services they receive from manufacturers, retailers, and the third parties that support them.”

Both the standard and special editions of Dragon Age: Origins have been sitting at comfortable positions on the Steam top sellers list since its arrival on the digital platform. Those who have purchased BioWare’s upcoming RPG should be happy to know that BioWare producer Derek French has confirmed that there will be a pre-load, which is due to start “world-wide sometime on November 1st.” As for its release, the region specific release dates are still the same, which is November 3 in North America and November 6 in Europe. And PS3 owners don’t have to wait anymore either, well in North America at least.

What could be a more fitting story on Halloween than one concerning the actual appearance of the living dead? And by living dead, we of course refer to the N-Gage, which despite all rules of natural science has somehow managed to stagger back into the news again: Nokia has announced that they are officially discontinuing support for the ill-fated cell phone/gaming handheld/application, with no more games being published and community support going offline at the end of September 2010 (via VG247).

Evidently this means the N-Gage was still technically alive all these years (who knew?), but that’ll change by this time next year. “While the N-Gage.com site together with the N-Gage Arena and other community features will remain in operation throughout 2010, the Ovi Store will be the new central place for all the mobile games that Nokia and other publishers offer from this point forward. We will no longer publish new games for the N-Gage platform,” reads a post on Nokia’s blog.

“Your games are safe — all your purchased N-Gage games will continue to work on your N-Gage compatible mobile device and they?re yours to keep,” they reassure they’re loyal N-Gage fans. “However, community features of the games will not be functional after 2010.” Nokia will continue to sell current devices that have the N-Gage application pre-installed “for some time,” but “will no longer ship new devices with the application pre-installed.”

Already sporting a luxurious moustache? Of course you are you perfect specimen of man. But if you’re not, now’s a good time to let those whiskers grow. Rockstar has announced that they’re sponsoring Movember, a month-long moustache growing event to raise awareness for men’s health issues, by offering a chance to win a role in Red Dead Redemption (via Joystiq).

The rules are pretty simple. Register on Movember’s website, then register your email address with Rockstar to participate in their event. Then proceed to grow the best moustache your genes will let you, and at the end of the month Rockstar will pick “the rugged hombre with the best mo” to have a character created in his image in Red Dead Redemption.

The one catch is if you are already sporting a luxurious moustache, you’ll have to shave it clean off and start anew. Otherwise, it would be cheating, after all.

Usually new iterations of popular portable devices get smaller (anyone remember the Game Boy Micro?), but Nintendo is bucking tradition with the DSi LL — a new version of their gaming handheld that adds an extra 1/4 of an inch to the screens. But that’s not all it adds: According to Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, the viewing angle for the DSi LL has been improved as well with the intention of making it a spectator system (via Joystiq).

“Nintendo DSi LL features not only bigger monitor screens,” Iwata said in a financial results briefing, “but an improved view angle on the screens to make it the first portable system that can be enjoyed with people surrounding the gamer.”

The idea is to allow people next to the person playing to get a better view of what’s happening on the screens, creating a “new play style where those who are surrounding the game player can also join in one way or the other to the game play.” While the intention is probably for new games to be designed specifically to be played this way on the DSi LL, Iwata also mentioned the Japan-only Tomodachi Collection as a currently released game that can already benefit from surrounding viewers.

As creative director Alex Hutchinson from EA Montreal takes us through a demo of Army of Two: The 40th Day at the Eurogamer Expo 2009, he explains that the original title sold an impressive 2.6 million copies worldwide, but the vast majority of these sales (70% to be exact) are from America. What does the ex-Maxis dev and the rest of EA blame this on? The tone of the game, apparently.

While an American audience felt at home with the foul-mouthed, wise-cracking banter of the original game, it was apparently too much for European gamers. So when coming up with the sequel, the devs wanted to be sure they struck the right balance for both audiences this time round. How to measure this balance? Why, fist bumping of course.

A lot of the attitude and dialogue that Salem and Rios produced in the first game was reflected in the moments where the player would have them clash fists, or annoy each other for a laugh. This kind of interaction was completely optional however, and the folks at Montreal have embraced that for the sequel. This means that if you continue doing these things in The 40th Day, then the pair will keep up their banter as usual. If however you’re not bothering to slap hands every time you land a headshot, then the game recognises that you’re more of a serious player, and cuts the chat out in favour of a more serious tone.

So now not only do we have gameplay options that cater to your style in nearly every shooter, there’s dialogue for your tastes too. Another pleasant announcement was the presence of not only 2-player split-screen, but being able to take 2 players on the same couch online.

Army of Two: The 40th Day hits January 12th next year, with more fist bumping action than you can shake a stick at.

According to a post by a community manager on the official Home forums, Sony is clarifying that Home director Pete Edwards was misquoted when it was reported he said Home is “not a priority right now but there is a business model there” during a speech at the London Games Conference earlier this week (via Kotaku).

“The coverage of what Pete Edwards said at the London Games Conference was not only a misquote, it was a misrepresentation of what he actually said,” the forum post reads. “Edwards was saying that monetizing Home was not as big a priority as building a great platform, with a compelling environment and a strong community. Home is still a top priority for Sony and will continue to release quality content and provide a positive experience to our users.”

So there you go, Home fans: The service is still a priority for Sony from a perspective of building it into a better community platform, just not so much from the perspective of trying monetize the experience beyond the business model that’s already in place.

In celebration of the original mod’s seventh anniversary, developer Unknown Worlds has whipped out the first two screenshots from Natural Selection 2, the stand-alone follow-up to the highly praised FPS/RTS Half-Life mod. If you missed the teaser trailer back in May, do yourself a favor and catch up. Considering the game’s being developed by a five-man team who even cooked up their own game engine, it’s pretty impressive stuff.

The game’s expected to see release via Steam some time next year with, unless plans have changed, Xbox 360 and Mac versions following later on.

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