Existing somewhere between Nancy Drew and James Bond, MySims: Agents takes the superdeformed MySims characters and adds a heaping amount of intrigue (or as much intrigue as an E-rated game is legally allowed to contain). But while casting adorable MySims in a kid-friendly, superspy adventure is an idea filled with potential, the game suffers from the one thing a superspy shouldn’t have to endure — boring and repetitive cases.
Like any Sims game, you start by creating, outfitting, and naming your character (detective Blaze, at your service), who is quickly recruited as a Special Agent after solving a couple neighborhood mysteries. The best things the game has going for it are the peppy characters, story (which involves a race to find the powerful “Crown of Nightmares” before the head of the evil MorcuCorp), and safe-for-all-ages humor (which relies more on witty writing and good comic timing than simple slapstick mayhem). It’s a direction that respects the intelligence of the game’s younger, target demographic, but unfortunately, I can’t say the same about the puzzle-solving gameplay.
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Sony has experienced a bit of a retailer backlash against the PSP Go. However, UK product manager Claire Backhouse told Gamesindustry.biz that they had expected worse.
“We were very aware of concerns when we went into it and I actually expected a lot more negative responses than we actually got,” she said.
“They were really quite fine with it. They see it as a way of getting people into the store because it’s new interest, a new product. And they’ve had such strong sales as well of PSP-3000 almost off the back of it.”
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With the digital-only PSP Go releasing tomorrow in stores, anyone buying one will be held at the mercy of the PlayStation Store and what games it offers up for sale. NIS America is looking to take advantage of what might be the best opportunity to take place of the marketplace by re-releasing some of their old titles on the PlayStation Network and have a 50% sale on six games for the next week.
For one week, you’ll be able to buy the following games for between $4.99 and $9.99: Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?; Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light; Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness; Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do to Deserve This?; Dragoneer’s Aria; and Mana Khemia: Student Alliance.
And in a matter that is completely and utterly irrelevant to PSP Go owners, NIS America is asking the public for help deciding if one of their games — Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! — should be released on UMD. A poll has been posted on PlayStation.Blog with the “No” option currently pulling away with 60% of the responses. If you ever want to see Badman hit store shelves, do your part and get voting.
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Infinity Ward may not be diverting resources toward making a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 demo, but they have already begun planning subsequent map packs for the game. Shacknews reports that, according to a… um… specialty-marked case of Monster energy drink (really, that’s how announcements are being made now?), the first map pack for Modern Warfare 2 will be released next spring.
The sponsored energy drink is advertising a Modern Warfare 2 giveaway contest on their packaging, which includes “5,000 MW2 Map Pack codes — planned release Spring 2010.” Infinity Ward has previously announced at least two map packs will be released for the game, but didn’t specify a timeline.
So now, we know what to look forward to after we’re done looking forward to the game itself.
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A significant update to PlayStation Home is ready for release to the public. Tomorrow, October 1, the 1.3 update to the oft-insulted service will be released, bringing with it a number of new features and improvements to the existing Home experience, most of which were detailed with the announcement of 1.3 back in August.
In case you’ve forgotten, the most noteworthy among the changes is universal game launching support. No longer will you be restricted to popping directly into a small selection of games with fellow Home users; you’ll now be able to jump right into a game from within Home. Of course, depending on the level of support from each particular title, just how far that will take you will vary — games that don’t support the feature will simply bring you to the Press Start screen, while others, such as Resistance 2, MotorStorm, and Street Fighter 4, will be able to take you straight into their respective multiplayer sections.
New emotes and actions will help diversify what you see happening inside of Home. The ability to preview items before purchasing them is also being added. As straightforward and obvious as that seems, you were unable to see clothes or items in action prior to dropping money on them. Other goodies include new types of items, such as ones that can only be used a certain number of times, and more portable items.
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Announced at the Tokyo Game Show last week, Resident Evil 5: Alternative Edition for the PlayStation 3 will add both motion control functionality with Sony’s new wand controller, as well as new content featuring Jill Valentine once again as a playable character. And while the motion controls will remain a Sony exclusive, it looks like the bonus content won’t. Dengeki Online reports (via IGN’s translation) that Capcom plans to release this bonus material for the Xbox 360, potentially as DLC.
Dengenki’s report states that the bonus material might be released on the 360 in a “different format” than on the PS3, suggesting it probably won’t be a separate retail release — which, naturally, leaves downloadable content as the next likely option. This content would include the “Jill episode” that Capcom is adding to the game, which takes place three years before the events of RE5 as Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield infiltrate the mansion owned by Umbrella Corp. founder Ozwell E. Spencer.
What other bonus material Alternative Edition will include hasn’t been revealed, but producer Jun Takeuchi has teased that, “It’s a brand-new release, so we’re going to release it with more content than that.” The game isn’t scheduled to be released in Japan until next spring, though, so it could be a little while before we get more details.
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Dead Space Extraction is freshly out in stores, but those hoping for a true sequel to the original have reason to be excited today. Joystiq reports that a LinkedIn job posting hints at the future of the series. The posting is looking for a lead combat designer for the next Dead Space game. It teases that “the same core team is in place to create an even better follow up,” and goes on to state that “the game is in the later stages of pre-production, ready for production in the next few months.”
The first Dead Space was a surprise hit for EA, and past comments have shown confidence in the series. The posting does note that much of the groundwork was laid by the first game, so hopefully we’ll at least get a look at Dead Space 2 sometime next year.
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With sex still something of a taboo in video games, any game that includes it is bound to get its share of attention. Ubisoft doesn’t mind though, as director Benoit Lambert has confirmed that sexual content will be making its way to Assassin’s Creed II.
“Ezio is a womaniser,” Lambert told Videogaming247, referring to Assassin’s Creed II’s Renaissance-era protagonist.
“There’s a bit of sex. I can’t say more.”
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By the time I finished with Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, my left thumb felt like it was about to fall off. In fact, while playing through it, I frequently had to take breaks during long encounters to rest my aching D-pad hand. But through it all, I persisted. Yes, it’s my job, but also because while I felt I had seen most of what the game had to offer long before the end, I wanted to continue on for more selfish reasons — I wanted to know how the story ended.
Days’ story deals with the concept of souls (or in this case, hearts) and what exactly makes a person “real,” as seen, mostly, through Roxas’ point of view, as he works to understand who he is and where he came from. Regular Kingdom Hearts protagonist Sora is deep in a healing slumber after the events of Chain of Memories, with the witch Naminé working to put his memories back in place. Fans will recall playing as Roxas, Sora’s “Nobody” (a strong person with no heart), at the beginning of Kingdom Hearts 2, and Days will take you through most of the 358 days of Roxas’ life, from when he first joins Organization XIII leading up to the beginning of KH2.
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If you haven’t played Sins of a Solar Empire in a while, you might want to keep an eye on the update that will be dropping soon. Ironclad has posted a massive list of balance changes over at the official forums, which they hope will bring every unit back “into the pool of viable tools.”
“Naturally, trying to figure exactly what those changes needed to be was not an easy problem but one of the best ways was to play the game against as many players as possible so we once again took to playing regularly on Ironclad Online,” wrote an Ironclad representative.
“Unfortunately, we couldn’t use our real names because when we did in the past we were the targets of unreasonable unholy alliances. Such circumstances aren’t great for collecting data and analyzing strategies. Sorry for the smurfing but it was for a good cause.”
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