Thursday, February 26, 2009

Rumor: Assassin’s Creed 2 Takes Place in Venice

We know Assassin's Creed 2 is coming, Ubisoft confirmed it. However, details on the sequel have been yet to be released since the game has never really been "officially" announced yet. Now, word has come in from a Destructoid reader on some of the first details for Assassin's Creed 2. Since nothing is confirmed, we'll call them rumors.

According to the gaming blog, the fellow who sent the e-mail works in a foreign outlet, and was able to get a glimpse of Assassin's Creed 2. He told the site of the game and that it would take place in Venice, Italy.

Today, an e-mail has been sent to them with full details of what he saw. It sounds believable, and due to my love for anything in Italy, I have high hopes it's true.


Whilst wondering around town today during my lunch break i noticed a Ubisoft booth. people were asking questionnaires about games. I thought hey, I'm a gamer, a pretty hardcore one i think il give this a go. so i did; Questionnaire wasn't too exciting to be fair, it was what happened afterwards that was. I was brought into a room with a TV set up and this is what followed :

A trailer for lo and behold, assassins creed 2, all be it in production and not finalised i will explain what i saw

Venice 15th/16th century, The camera pans onto the city focusing on the hussle and bussle of daily life. think the civilians from assassins creed 1 but more interactive with each other. During this scene we see a man passing money to the hands of an attractive girl, (originally i didn't notice this but was told by the rep that it does happen).

2 Men, a relatively large one and a skinny one step off a boat with a cohort of guards and proceed to a Square within the city, where a masked ball was taking place. Every ones dancing around, not much to say here other than that it was a ball.

The girl seen previously accepting the bribe, approaches the skinnier of the two men and takes him off to the crowd, for a dance, she was good looking, who'd say no. The camera spins around them centrally, but focusing on the dancers as a whole.

A guy comes out from the side, dressed in dancers garb and proceeds to stab this skinnier man in the neck, with what looks like the finger blade from AC1. Man dies spewing blood, garbble garbble etcetc.

The 2nd of the men, the fatter one, notices this and proceeds to run, after sending the guards after the protagonist. Who, by this time has reached the roof and runs parallel to the target who continues to run on the floor. The player jumps off onto the ground and the fat man stops. commenting on the fanciness of the jump.

Facing off, the fat man continues to speak. i cant quite recall the exact words but it was something along the lines of

"It was a shame that your mother had to die, she was a beautiful woman ... Your father on the other hand, it was due to your arrogance that he died"

The protagonist then shoots at the fat Man with a bolt pistol, and the trailer ends.

Post trailer discussion, a family feud was hinted at, yet nothing was said about the brotherhood. Disguises were also said to play a part in this game. The trailer was not fully textured or rendered but seemed on par to the crow trailer originally showed for assassins creed 1. due to the lack of textures and the like combined with the fluidity i would assume it wasn't game play. furthermore after the trailer was shown, i was shown 3 pictures of the protagonist, all in different clothes and chose to pick a favourite. significantly underneath the word ezio was written on all 3 pictures. I believe this to be the guys name, as it sounds Italian. Again his face wasn't entirely shown, so i assume it is the future reliving the past again.

Was told that this would be shown at a game expo this year, but not told which one. hinted E3 when pressured. release was given tho on a broad scale. Late this year early next
Via: scrawlfx

GTA: Chinatown Wars trailer is stupidly high quality

Kotaku’s posted a proper trailer for GTA: Chinatown Wars, and it looks as good as you’d expect.

There’s a bit of gameplay in there, and a whole lot of art. Essential stuff for the DS-loving hardcore out there.

It’s out in March.

Via: vg247

Wasn't thXbox 360 Outsells Wii, PS3 In Japan

How did Microsoft manage to sell more Xbox 360s than the competition this week in Japan? With a little help from Square Enix's Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope.

The role-playing game shot the Xbox 360 from its regular second-to-last place showing to third—it was still behind the Nintendo DSi and PSP—besting sales of both Nintendo and Sony's console hardware. The 360 had previously kicked its console competition to the curb thanks to strong sales of Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation, Tales of Vesperia and Infinite Undiscovery.

This represents the fourth week that Microsoft has managed to outsell its competition in Japan.

  • Nintendo DSi - 41,839
  • PSP - 29,552
  • Xbox 360 - 25,334
  • Wii - 16,973
  • PlayStation 3 - 16,149
  • Nintendo DS Lite - 9,975
  • PlayStation 2 - 5,029

As you can see there was much to compete with, as weekly sales of the Wii and PS3 were on the lower end of Media Create's numbers. Still, it keeps things interesting in a regularly dull hardware race.

Via: kotaku

Media Molecule: LittleBigPlanet to get YouTube uploads

Speaking in this Electric Playground episode, Media Molecule’s Kareem Ettouney has mentioned that YouTube uploads are on the way for LittleBigPlanet.

“A lot of people in the LittleBigPlanet World are really keen on showing off how they made their creations,” he said when asked about upcoming features.

“It’s an obvious need. You go on YouTube and [see] all those videos. Let’s give the users a tool that can stream the content and put it on YouTube.”

It is fairly obvious, yep.

Current games that make use of PS3’s access to the YouTube API include PixelJunk Eden, PixelJunk Monsters and Noby Noby Boy.

We’ve asked Sony for an official line on this, so we’ll have that soon.

Thanks, LittleBigPlanetoid.

Via: vg247


Mark it in your datebook: Avalon Code coming March 10


The Marvelous/XSEED publishing superteam has announced a release date for Matrix Software's action RPG Avalon Code. Should you RPG fans finish Blue Dragon Plus and Legacy of Ys this week, you'll still have Avalon Code to look forward to on March 10.

Avalon Code tasks players with filling a magical "Book of Prophecy" with monsters, people, and everything else found throughout the world. Once profiled, the pages from this book can then be used to alter the game world and "influence a myriad of parameters from monster attributes to weapon strength." The book is also useful for identifying stats and elemental weaknesses about monsters you encounter.

Via: joystiq

New Price Cut Rumours

MCV are reporting on analyst claims that the Playstation will possibly have its price cut announced within days.

Apparently the analyst in question (Mike Hickey) is predicting a $100 reduction in April or at least by June (E3 is going to be a biggy this year).

The bad news is that this fantasist, sorry… analyst is also predicting the release of a lower cost PS3 without a Blu-Ray drive. So that’s a PS3 that can’t play any PS3 games and would necessitate all future releases to be on both Blu-Ray and DVD. Basically that’s an Xbox isn’t it? No chance.

Via: thesixthaxis

Dave Perry says PSP 2 is Real, Could Come by Fall

Rumors of a successor to the PSP that'd eschew the handheld's propriety UMD format have swirled for a long time, and gained even more traction recently after Sony posted a job listing that mentioned an unreleased "new game hardware." Now, if Acclaim chief creative officer Dave Perry is to be believed, those rumors are just about confirmed: He says the PSP 2 is real, won't use UMDs, and could even be out as soon as this fall.

"I hear Sony FINALLY has the PSP 2. And thank goodness, they've removed the stupid battery-sucking UMD disc drive. I'm excited!" wrote Perry in both a Twitter message and on his FaceBook page. Clarifying his remark with Kotaku, Perry said, "I spoke to a developer who is working on [the PSP 2] right now. I know this developer is already working on it, so that means they have a prototype. That would sound like a fall release to me."

Although Sony has yet to officially announce anything concerning a PSP successor, it'd be surprising if Perry's information was completely off the mark. Theories about a PSP 2 that'd use memory sticks (or an internal hard drive) and focus on digital game downloads have been bandied for years, and with the original PSP in its fifth year of release, the timing would seem right.

But until Sony finally decides they're ready to show their cards, we really won't know what they're planning. Could a reveal, perhaps, be coming at E3?

Via: 1up

Large, Girly Ken Statue Is On Fire

With two games released since Christmas, Street Fighter is on fire. The kids at SOTA toys have probably taken it a bit too far, though, with this burning Ken statue.

Not only does it look like he's wearing a fluffy, fire-coloured mink coat, but he also looks like a 12 year-old girl wearing a moppish blonde wig. Ah well. That might be just your thing! If so, this resin statue will set you back $110, and will be Q2 2009.

Street Fighter: Ken Resin Statue [Action-Figure]

Via: kotaku

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood - Trailer

Rumor: PSP 2 Won't Have UMD Drive

The new Playstation Portable won't feature a UMD disc drive, according to Acclaim developer David Perry.

"I hear Sony FINALLY has the PSP 2. And thank goodness, they've removed the stupid battery-sucking UMD disc drive. I'm excited!" Perry wrote on both his Twitter and Facebook accounts.

It is unclear if he has seen the rumored new Playstation Portable himself or is just hearing rumors through the development community.

This rumor is the latest in a series of rumors to hit the net in the past month or so, including one from IGN and another from VG247.

If it's true that the Playstation Portable 2 won't feature a UMD disc drive, than I'd say it's likely it will instead rely on Memory Sticks and downloads through the Playstation Network Store. The bigger question is whether such a device could be backwards compatible, and if so how it would work.

There has been an awful lot of news about the PSP coming out lately, so I think it's a safe bet to say that we can expect something from Sony about the next iteration of the Playstation Portable at E3.

Via: kotaku