The Punisher: No Mercy will be available on the PlayStation Store on July 2nd for $10. I really hope there’s a demo. I’m interested because of my love for The Punisher, but I also have a love/hate relationship with first-person shooters. When done right, it’s one of my favorite genres, but more often than not it’s done wrong.

It’s been a long time coming, but finally there’s a demo of Kojima Production’s Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots on the PlayStation Store.  The Japanese PlayStation Store that is.

We’ve had a history reporting on the possibility of a Metal Gear Solid 4 demo here at Ripten.  PSW announced a demo to be released in February, despite the games Assistant Producer denying its existence a month beforehand and we were quick to correct PSW a week later. Everyone makes mistakes. At least that’s what we thought…

Konami have now released a beefy demo of Metal Gear Solid 4 on the Japanese PlayStation Store, weighing in at approximately 1400mb.  For PlayStation 3 owners who haven’t bought the game, give it a whirl.  For Westerners who missed out on the joys of the Japanese voice acting, why not give it a spin too.

As is outlined in my review, the game comes highly recommended.

[UPDATE] – The demo is also on European PlayStation Stores, so the probability of it making its way to the US is reasonably high.

[UPDATE 2] – The Official PlayStation Blog has confirmed that the same Metal Gear Solid 4 demo will be available on the US PlayStation Store.

We said WipEout HD should be released by the end of the month and we were right. The download only game will be available globally on September 25th.

Consisting of 8 reversible tracks, 5 game modes, 8 player online, 2 player split screen, custom soundtrack support and 38 trophies, WipEout HD promises much for a tasty price ($19.99/£11.99).

Already looking like a critical success, Sony Liverpool’s futuristic racer could be worth all the effort.

Sources: PlayStation Blog and Eurogamer

WipEout HD Image Gallery

41 Photos

 

Still in the race for release, Sony Liverpool’s WipEout HD has been given a price tasty enough to tempt any PlayStation 3 owner. 

The upcoming PlayStation Store game WipEout HD will cost only £11.99 when it’s available, hopefully at the end of this month.  ‘Hopefully’ being the opperative word, since the game has yet to be given a release date  after being extensively pushed back due to a specific technical problem.

Running at 60 frames-per-second in 1080p, WipEout HD will offer 8 tracks and online play.  Although there’s been no word on the American price, at just over ten quid in the UK we don’t expect your digital wallet to be stretched too far.

Source: CVG

[UPDATE] - 1up.com reveals that WipEout HD will be priced at a bargain $20 when it arrives on the US PlayStation Store.

WipEout HD Image Gallery

41 Photos

 

Last week we jumped on a German software ratings website, spying a new PlayStation 3 game titled Savage Moon. We had hopes that we had spoilt a big Sony announcement. We hadn’t.

Savage Moon is “just” a classic tower defense game set in outer space. Wait? Tower Defense set in space? This sounds like a mix of PixelJunk Monsters and Super Stardust HD, two of the PS3’s best downloadable games. Plus, you get to defend the outpost “Savage Moon” from massive space bugs. O.K. we were expecting more, but it’s certainly not an unpleasant surprise.

Classic tower strategy gameplay heads into outer space in Savage Moon, as players attempt to protect an isolated planetary outpost from rampaging hordes of gigantic, ravenous space bugs. Position your towers in the best position possible to beat the bugs and convert your victory points into weapons that suit your preferred tactics. Classic strategy gaming meets interstellar gameplay with endless strategic possibilities.

Can you beat the bugs and save the moon?

Savage Moon Gallery

11 Photos

 

The PixelJunk series has taken the PlayStation Network by storm, with unique concepts feeding the addictive gaming need of the PlayStation massive. 

I talk to Q-Games founder Dylan Cuthbert about their upcoming game PixelJunk Eden, in addition to Trophies, future projects and how they manage to pump out such great games at an astounding rate.

Patrick: Hello Dylan, thanks for answering some of our questions. Can you talk a little bit about the overall design philosophy for the Pixeljunk series?

Dylan: PixelJunk series 1 was created to let us go back and make the kind of games we wanted to make before 3d made it’s appearance, but at the same time to use modern technology to do things we couldn’t do back then. One technology is Full-HD and HDMI which might not seem it but is a huge enabler of PixelJunk – HDMI gives us proper colours at last, and Full-HD gives us no pixilation with extremely high clarity of image. All of our games have been designed to appeal to this – you might see a lot of games that run in 1080p but the graphics still look like flash games, this is because they aren’t taking 1080p and running with it properly. 1080p gives you *resolution* which is detail, so developers are going to have to learn to not be afraid of that.

Patrick: How would you classify Pixeljunk Eden? Is it a relaxing casual game, a challenging hardcore game, or a combination of both?

Dylan: PixelJunk Eden is a relaxing game which is challenging at the same time. I think we’ve somehow magically struck the perfect balance, but that of course is up to you all to decide.

Remember that Mario Bros. 1 was a “casual” game that probably billions of people have played and enjoyed, but at the same time it was incredibly challenging, but because of the amazing attention to detail in the controls for that game you can still play it now and have a ton of fun. This is what we’ve aimed for with Eden’s core dynamics. We think people will play this game over and over again, simply because it feels fun all the time. I’ve probably played it the most and I still boot up a different level each day and have a blast. There’s just something intrinsically “feel-good” about it.

Patrick: How do you balance the relaxing and challenging aspects of the game? Can you play entirely one way or the other (without a time limit, for example?)

Dylan: Early on we didn’t have the “oscillator” gauge that acts as your time limit, but that caused the game to lack tension (even slight tension). One important design decision was to limit the max of the oscillator so the player doesn’t just have to keep collecting the tuning crystals – ie. you collect a few to be safe for a few minutes, then you bound around, then you search out a few more crystals etc., it adds a really good rhythm to the play and gets the player to go to different areas of the stage he might not have gone to otherwise. The tuning crystals are kind of like the coins in a Mario game and the game is balanced so you don’t have to collect them all.

For people who just want to dope out without time they can play around on the title screen which is, of course, your garden of Eden, from which you tune into other gardens.

Patrick: How would you describe the visual style and audio design for Eden?

Dylan: Mmm… “minimalist avant-garde” perhaps? There’s probably a little art-deco in there too.

Patrick: How many levels are in the game? Are there any unlockable bonus modes?

Dylan: There are 10 gardens, each of which is fairly huge. You kind of expand each one with each play as the no. of Spectra you have to collect increases and your home garden (the title screens) grows and lets you get to other stages. For a good player there’s at least fifteen hours of gameplay I think. The difficulty slope is tuned pretty nicely and we’ve had several comments from online sites with preview copies reflecting this.

I can’t tell you about unlockable stuff, you’re going to have to find out for yourselves. ;)

Patrick: What are some of the ways you introduce new challenges to the player? We played one level where the gravity continually shifts– are there other surprises like that to be found?

Dylan: Yes, the gravity stage is my personal favourite, it’s something I’ve wanted to put in a game since I was about ten years old. Games are abstract so the current trend towards realism is frustrating, we need more games like Portal for example. Anyway, we have a no. of other cool gimmicks in there, and they are introduced to the player over the course of playing the game, so I shouldn’t reveal them too much as it is more fun to be surprised by them.

Patrick: Will Eden receive bonus levels, like Monsters did a few months back?

If it’s popular then yes, most definitely, we want to give fans what they want if we can (and it helps us fund future games.)

Patrick: Will Eden support custom soundtracks? Moreover, will PixelJunk Monsters support custom soundtracks as was shown in the Playstation.Blog demonstration of Firmware update 2.40?

Dylan: Custom soundtracks are a bit difficult to implement when we’ve gone out of our way to tie our design and music together to this extent. I’m not sure this whole custom soundtrack thing is good for the artistic integrity of a game, however the answer to this question is neither yes nor no.

Patrick: Is there a story to tie together the action in Eden?

Dylan: Your garden of Eden has been laid waste by the pollen prowlers and the Spectra energy you need for your garden has been scattered far and wide. Tune into these other garden’s dimensions and find your Spectra to grow your garden back to its former glory!

Patrick: What kind of natural environments inspired you while working on this game?

Dylan: Well truth be told, the first illustrative sketch Baiyon drew was of a very colourful jungle with little creatures everywhere. We slowly whittled that down into the solid gameplay that Eden has now, adding physics and pixel-perfect collision detection, and the whole plants growing thing on the way.

Patrick: We understand that Eden will support trophies. How many trophies will there be, and are there some incredibly tough Gold medals to grab?

Dylan: That info isn’t officially available yet, but if you look online you will see that someone has already leaked it and as far as I can see that info is correct. The total “exp” you will get from the trophies is the same as other PSN games but we haven’t any gold trophies, this is to let us have a few more bronze trophies. We wanted a few extra weird challenges for everyone. There is one silver trophy though.

For more information on Eden’s trophies, please visit Dylan’s entry on the Official Playstation Blog.

Patrick: Will you be rolling out a trophies patch for PixelJunk Monsters?

Dylan: We are looking into it, but there are a no. of technical problems to overcome. Hopefully we’ll overcome them and get trophies into Monsters as soon as we can.

Patrick: What’s next for PixelJunk? Is Dungeons on track for release in another 6 months?

Dylan: There are no dates set yet for future PixelJunk titles and I really want to start series 2 as soon as I can. That being said, we are definitely working on more! All I can say is visit pixeljunk.jp from time to time.

Patrick: Will Dungeons be in a similar 2D style as the previous games?

Dylan: Dungeons isn’t officially announced yet, and perhaps we will release a game before that one gets finished, who knows.  We like to keep all our options open, and even something that seems as obvious as to what it is as “Dungeons” is, might not end up being what people expect it to be.  ;-)

Whatever these games become though, you can rest-assured they will be as innovative and fun as we can possibly make them.

Patrick: You appear to be popping out PSN games very efficiently.  You must be running a tight ship.  How big is your team, and what advice would you give other PSN/XBL developers who might like to meet a release schedule as productive as yours?

Dylan: Why dilly-dally eh?  Games used to be made at this rate back in the 1980s and with less people, so there must be ways to get back to that level of production and we are in the process of re-discovering them again.

It makes the whole game-making process addictive to developers again if they can make stuff and then see people playing it within the same year.  If you make the process addictive again you are going to get better and more interesting games as a natural result.  This is why indy games have become so good the past few years.  That, and avenues such as PSN and XBLA are available to release the games on now.  It lets us make smaller games with variable price points.

Patrick: Many people won’t know that Q-Games also created the Earth Music Visualizer and the wavy cloth background for the PS3, can you talk a little bit about how these came about?

Dylan: We have always had a close relationship with Sony, and we’ve developed lots of tech. for them over the years, a lot of which hasn’t seen the light of day.  The Earth visualiser (and the main visualiser, as well as the cloth background) are the results of that collaboration.  We also have tech examples in the PSP SDK (stained-glass and focus-blur) and our demos were showing off the PSP at its debut at E3 2004.  (Harmonic City and Duck in a bath)

Talking of duck-in-a-bath, we had nothing to do with the PS3 demo or game but I originally made the PS2 duck-bath technical demonstration which was rendered  with curved surfaces!

Patrick: Do you have any plans for similar visualisers, or an update to the current ones? Such as a more music reactive behaviour for the Earth visualiser.  How about a PixelJunk Eden music visualiser?

Dylan: We have no plans at the moment – we are too busy on other stuff, and of course PixelJunk now, but you never know in the future something might come up.

Patrick: Thanks very much for your time. One last question: How much will PixelJunk Eden cost and when can we buy it!?

Dylan: It is out simultaneously worldwide on July 31st – in the US it will be under 10 bucks, and in the EU it will be under 8 euros I think.  In Japan it will be 900 yen, so roughly the same price across all territories.

And there’s more good news. A PixelJunk Eden demo will be released on the US PlayStation Store tonight! Ooh, that made me feel like Jack Tretton at E3. If you’re a European who’s not savvy enough to create a US PSN account, a demo will release on the Euro PlayStation Store alongside the full game next week.

For our hands-on impressions of PixelJunk Eden please jump over to Andrew Podolsky’s Preview.

PixelJunk Eden Image Gallery

10 Photos

 

Maybe I’m spoiled. Maybe my expectations are too high. Whatever the reason, the most positive thing I can say about Conflict: Denied Ops is that I was not physically injured by how horrible it was.

Well, maybe that’s a bit harsh. There’s nothing really fundamentally wrong with the game — it’s just so underwhelming in pretty much every aspect that’s supposed to make games fun.

Browsing the Xbox Live Marketplace, it seems the developers spent a lot of time trying to make people think this game was going to be cool. Developer diaries and trailers showcase the “destructible environments” and cooperative elements — both of which, in practice, suck ass.

In one of the videos, the player blows a hole in a wall with a shotgun and then shoots through the newly formed hole with his sniper rifle. Seems like that should be awesome, but it’s not. The most destructible thing I encountered was a wooden guardrail around some stairs, which splintered in a very impressive N64-era kind of way.

I shot plenty of things with my shotgun in an attempt to destruct the environment. A television screen shattered (not impressive) and I put a dent in a table (also not impressive). While it is a step up from the flat, untextured decals that represented bullet holes in the past, it is not the mind-blowing feature they try to make it out to be.

As far as co-op, it’s just garbage. Playing this game with a buddy is like when you eat something disgusting and then say “Dude, this tastes like shit! Here, try it!” It’s nice to have someone to share in the experience, but it would be more fun to just take turns stabbing each other in the brain.

Then the characters themselves — wow. You have your choice between generic white guy and generic black guy. Whitey has a sniper rifle with a shotgun attachment, as well as a silenced pistol. Blacky has a light machine gun with a grenade launcher attachment and a rocket launcher. Their interactions with each other remind me of Padmé and Anakin from Star Wars Episode II — more irritating than a sandy vagina.

The shooting is pretty bland. The sniper rifle has absolutely no kick and barely makes any noise. I kept shooting a wall when I first loaded the game up, and I couldn’t tell that I was even shooting. The wall didn’t deform like I expected either, adding to my uncertainty as to whether or not I was actually firing. Maybe I was just confused because of how bad the graphics are…

The overall impression I get from this game is that it sucks. It’s either poorly designed by people that don’t know what fun is, or it was targeted at 3-year-olds that don’t quite understand all the intricacies (the few that exist) of tactically shooting people in the face. In either case, I think it’s in your best interest to only play this game if you hate yourself.

For all you masochists out there, the demo is available now for download on the Xbox Live Marketplace and PSN.

We knew it was coming soon, but not this soon. If you already have a Japanese Playstation Network account, Japanese gangland fun is only a few button presses away.

And if you don’t already have one, they’re free and easy to create (just Google it).

Sega’s actually supplied two demos for Yakuza 3 (known as Ryu ga Gotoku 3 in Japan). This serves two purposes: to keep the overall download size down (together they’d weigh in around a whopping 1.8 gigs) and to accurately represent different aspects of the game.

One demo focuses on story and contains the prologue chapter of the game while the other emphasizes the free-roaming, NPC-interacting, mini-gaming bits that make the Yakuza series so much fun.

It should be noted that if you’re not fluent in Japanese, you’ll probably have little to no clue what’s actually going on (it’s heavy on the text and dialogue), but if you’re at all familiar with how Ryu ga Gotoku plays, it shouldn’t take long to figure things out.

For everyone else, well, you can stare at the pretty graphics as you stumble your way through 17th century Japan. You’re guaranteed to do some head-knocking along the way and, really, isn’t that what being a gangster is all about?

Can we blame them? They brought us 3 gems last week – a Super Stardust HD demo and upgrade, The Club demo and a new PSN game, Snakeball.

The Australian Store has already been updated, and reports from the French Playstation forum suggests that the same meager offerings are on their way to Europe also.

*Update* – A French Sony representative lets us know that last week was their week off and so they had nothing set up for this week, which is perfectly fine. Therefore, this weeks European update is only what they had hanging around, making our title a tad unkind.

European Store Update:

Downloadable Content
Folklore – Fear in the Night Pack (AU$3.45) [4 additional side quests, 1 additional folk, 1 additional costume for Ellen]

Media
Devil May Cry 4 – “Final trailer” (Free, 212 MB)

US Playstation Store Update:

Games/Demos:
-NFL Tour ‘09 Network demo

Downloadable Content:
-NFS: ProStreet – numerous unlockables – between $1.99 and $2.99 each

Rock Band:
Individual Songs – $.99 each unless noted otherwise:
-“Attack” – 30 Seconds to Mars
-“The Kill” – 30 Seconds to Mars
-“Dirty Little Secret” – All-American Rejects
-“Move Along” – All-American Rejects
-“Song With a Mission” – The Sounds
-“Limelight” – Rush – $1.99
-“Hard to Handle” – The Black Crowes – $1.99
-“Gimme Three Steps” – Lynyrd Skynyrd – $1.99

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
-Die Fantastischen Vier – “Ernten Was Wir Säen” – $2.49
-Trust – “Antisocial” – $2.49
-Extremoduro – “So Payaso” – $2.49
-Warner/Reprise Track Pack – $6.25
–Linkin Park – “No More Sorrow”
–Mastodon – “Sleeping Giant”
–The Used – “Pretty Handsome Awkward”

Trailers:
-Gran Turismo 5 Prologue Japanese Launch

Completists be damned! In this brave new era of DLC, there’s always a new monster to slay or a new quest to complete. Such as it is with Folklore, which’ll be getting two new mini-expansions sometime soon.

Downloadable over PSN (of course), both will feature a new costume for one of the characters, a new folk, and a four-quest story arc to follow.

The first, called “Kidnapped Folk” features Ellen in arguably her most questionable wardrobe yet. What looks like black leather and fishnets? Sign me up! The armor-clad Maximillian joins her on a quest to track down the titularly-filched folk.

The second, “Bottom of the Sea,” seems less compelling, but apparently ties some of the loose ends left dangling in “Kidnapped Folk.” Plus, you get to dress Keats up in a really cool Kamen Rider-esque costume. The new folk in this pack, Phutcampus, sounds more like a boss than a potential companion, though.

Both packs will be available for $3.99 individually or $5.99 bundled. No exact date has been set (though they’re coming this month). Sony promises even more bite-sized add-ons like this for Folklore in the future.

Source: Playstation.blog

It’s Thursday again, which means that it’s time for Sony to throw up some content on the good ol’ Playstation Store. The marquee release this week is PAIN, a game once unceremoniously touted as being thought up by a marketing department. If that doesn’t blow your skirt up, there’s plenty of DLC for your favorite Playstation 3 titles.

Despite those negative connotations, you’ve got a game that’s roughly reminiscent of Stair Dismount. Fling your little ragdoll dude out of his giant slingshot and then relish in the sounds of his torture as he slams into walls, skids across the pavement, bravely submits to gratuitous nut shots, and gets run over by a semi. It’s kind of like a Tony Hawk game without the skateboards, which means that it’s completely obnoxious. Even so, some potentially fun gameplay seems to lay underneath as you complete various challenges and combo your way to the nearest hospital. Just check out the video below, which runs through the different modes:

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

It’s all yours for an (admittedly tenuous value of) $9.99.

Otherwise, feel free to entertain yourself with a new Resistance Map Pack featuring Axebridge and Bracknell ($4.99 by itself, $7.99 bundled with the first pack), several new vehicles for Motorstorm including the Lunar-Tec Buffalo BigRig monstrosity, and fresh songs to shred to on both Guitar Hero III (Boss Battles) as well as Rock Band (Bowie Pack + Individual Songs, now how timely was my use of Jareth as a lead picture?). And how could I almost forget to mention the Oblivion expansion Shivering Isles ($29.99)?

Rounding everything out is a Timeshift multiplayer demo and a couple of inconsequential trailers. There’s still no sign of the HOME open beta or LittleBigPlanet. Granted, the year’s not out yet, but it does have us on tenterhooks. December is still hopeful for demos, though, with Burnout Paradise, Hot Shots Golf 5, and Devil May Cry4 all on track for the yule season.

For full information and pricing, see Playstation.blog.

Well, the PSN Store update today is just a little bit disappointing. We were foolishly expecting Haze on the EU store, but they only received an old Stranglehold demo, and the US Store didn’t get much either.

So what’s in store for the US Playstation Store? You’ll be pleased to know that there are actually two demos: A demo of Blazing Angels 2, and a demo of the PSN game Toy Home. Hm, we guess that’s good enough, though it’s a bit of a letdown after Uncharted last week and the expectations for Haze.

The full update looks like this:

Demos:

Toy Home
Blazing Angels 2

Game Videos:

Playstation Network Video
Toy Home Video
PAIN Launch Trailer
High Velocity Bowling Trailer
Ratchet & Clank BTS: Animation
Ratchet & Clank BTS: Gameplay
Uncharted: DF Meet the Dogs video
Time Crisis 4 Trailer 2
Burnout Paradise Ultimate Driving Trailer
Battlefield: Bad Company Teaser Trailer
Timeshift FPS Differently Trailer 1

Movie Trailers:

The Dark Knight
This Christmas
David Gilmour – Remember That Night (Blu-ray)

Enjoy! Or at least try to.

It’s not often that we can jump up for joy and say that we were right about something, but today, Amy Henning has confirmed our initial report regarding the Uncharted Demo on the Official Playstation blog. If you remember our previous story from last week, we unearthed a statement from Evan Wells, the co-president of Naughty Dog, stating that the demo for their upcoming game will probably hit PSN twelve days before the release of the game. We stood behind that report, stating…

“As far as we are concerned, an Uncharted demo will be out 12 days before the American release…so in about 2 weeks! We can’t wait to get on down with Nathan Drake (uh, perhaps the wrong choice of words) on November 8th (at least on the US Playstation Store). Exciting stuff aye?”

Amy Henning, Gaming Director at Naughty Dog, replied to a poster on the Official Playstation blog stating the official release date of the demo…

“Hi Kittonwy — the demo will go live on the PSN next Thursday, November 8th.”

Well, as it turns out, the date we stated, wasn’t just close, it was right on the money! The Uncharted demo will grace your Playstation 3 on November 8th.

In terms of details, all we know about the demo at this point is that it will start with Drake and Elena parachuting out of their plane onto an island. IGN believes that the demo will include the first four levels, but we here at Ripten find that highly unlikely.

A preview build given to journalists included the first four chapters, but since the game has 20 chapters in total, including four of them in the demo might be a bit of a stretch, especially when the game weighs in at 25gb of Blu-ray goodness.

So rejoice, in fact double rejoice, because the game will be released a day early in the US (November 19th), as stated in this recent blog post, which also features a nifty new trailer. As the release date approaches, remember to check back with us for our review of the game as well — till then, enjoy the demo.

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, the pulp action-adventure game from Naughty Dog that makes us weak at the knees, like a fat boy at the sight of a triple chocolate fudge cake (is that PC? Moving on…) is soon to be gracing our Playstation3’s on November 20th in the US, and December 7th in Europe. But when do we get the demo I hear you ask (silently)?

It was said by the game’s Animation and AI programmer Christian Gyrling on the Official Playstation Blog that “a demo will be available in the PlayStation Store sometime mid November. I don’t know the exact date as of now.”

Mid-Novemeber isn’t soon enough though is it, that’s far too close to the release of the game. So Palgn.com.au did some digging and managed to get a healthy quote from Evan Wells, the co-president of Naughty Dog, stating…

“There will be a demo. It’s…. being tested by Sony right now and I think it will be available probably about twelve days before the Blu Ray disc is available in stores. So, it will give people a chance to try it out and hopefully they will go out to the store and buy it.”

O.K., there were the words “probably” and “about”, but we’re too excited to listen to that. As far as we are concerned, an Uncharted demo will be out 12 days before the American release…so in about 2 weeks! We can’t wait to get on down with Nathan Drake (uh, perhaps the wrong choice of words) on November 8th (at least on the US Playstation Store). Exciting stuff aye?