As you put the finishing touches on your latest laborious LittleBigPlanet masterpiece, you make a startling realization -- something is missing. Your homebrewed LittleBigLocale is missing its keystone; without this necessary component, your hours of work will have been for naught. The component is, of course, a statue of Horace Horsecollar and his bovine betrothed, Clarabelle Cow.
While the previous sentence likely only made sense to people who watched cartoons in the 1930s, the following will probably be clearer -- according to the latest revolution of Electronic Gaming Monthly's rumor mill, LittleBigPlanet DLC is set to include non-sony property, such as characters from Disney franchises and 3rd-party PlayStation titles. We're not sure in what capacity these properties could be included in Media Molecule's uber-customizable platformer, but we're certainly excited about the prospective existence of SackBaloo.
"How dare he abandon us?" you may scream into your monitor (and later into your favorite pillow). Warren Spector, developer of core gamer classics such as Thief and Deus Ex, is working for the mainstream audience. In a Forbes article about casual gaming's increasing influence, Spector said, "I don't believe I'm compromising on my gameplay ideals at all. [But] any artist who doesn't want his or her work in front of the largest audience possible is nuts." Spector's "shift" shouldn't come as a surprise. For starters, we know his company, the Disney-owned Junction Point Studios, is currently working on a Pixar collaboration. He also intimated his desire for more mainstream development at the Games Education Summit in June.
"I'm sure a lot of the hardcore folks are going to be up in arms and I'm really looking forward to getting into that discussion with them," he said, later adding that he feels the hardcore genre is "completely safe" but "less relevant to major publishers" -- Cliff Bleszinki can breathe a sigh of relief. What we're wondering, now more than ever, is what's going on with the untitled fantasy project we haven't heard about since June 2007.
We're been excited for Pure since E3, when we first got our hands on the ATV racer. Built by Blackrock Studios (formerly known as Climax Racing) Pure is gorgeous, with a Burnout-esque structure and a "why has no one thought of this" boosting risk/reward system that's just brilliant. Here's what the rest of the internet thought:
GameDaily(90/100): "When it comes right down to it, though, Pure has some of the best racing action we've seen all year. The throttling gameplay, gorgeous presentation and sweet multiplayer options make it a ride you cannot miss."
IGN(86/100): "Pure delivers an outrageous, arcadey off-road racing experience with style and slickness. The controls are intuitive, the tracks are pure eye candy and the tricks are so crazy and over-the-top that you'll find yourself gasping with glee when you land your first Lazy Girl."
1UP (83/100): "Thrilling on the ground, downright heart-stopping in the air, and beautiful throughout, Pure's a blast from start to finish. A career mode would've gone further than the game's 'World Tour' in fully eliminating repetitiveness, but Black Rock has otherwise built a real winner here."
Gameplanet (85/100): "This is a great example of what can be achieved if fun is the primary aim. Massive tricks, amazing scenery, hugely modifiable bikes - what more do you want?"
Disney Interactive Studios has informed us -- by means of a very elaborate musical number -- that its edge-of-the-seat ATV racer, Pure, has shipped out and should be available in "all major retailers" on September 23. Several online retailers are already sending out copies, however, so you'd best check in with your favorite store if next week lies outside your boundaries of patience.
If you're not sold on developer Black Rock Studio's high-flying bag of tricks, there's a downloadable demo waiting for you on the Xbox Live Marketplace and the PlayStation store.
Sony announced today at the Leipzig Games Convention 2008 that over 2.2 million SingStar songs have been downloaded via the aptly titled SingStore, which launched less than a year ago. Additionally, the company also unveiledSingStar Singalong with Disney for PlayStation 2, which as you might have guessed is a collection of Disney songs you can sing along to. Singalong with Disney is coming this Fall "exclusively for PAL territories." And hey, don't forget it'll be compatible with SingStar PS3.
Source – SingStar Singalong With Disney on PlayStation 2 Source – Over 2.2m songs downloaded via SingStore
Disney Interactive Studio VP Graham Hopper thinks Disney needs more role-playing games. Speaking with GameDaily, Hopper says the company has an RPG in the pipeline, but can't yet make an announcement. Square Enix's Kingdom Hearts series is probably the only RPG we can think of that uses Disney characters, but that was more of a dalliance on the house of Mickey's part.
Hopper goes on to say that RPGs fit with Disney because the company believes storytelling and character design are important. He notes the company isn't looking to make "the hardest core RPG," but a blend, which he believes the studio is fully capable of. May Diablo help us if Disney's answer to role-playing is something like High School Musical RPG.
The first thing we noticed when we stepped into the Showcase Pavillion at this year's E3: This is really quite small. The second thing we noticed: Everyone seems to be dancing! Everywhere we looked, there seemed to be someone (usually with a Wii Remote/Nunchuk in hand) waggling about to some vary hard-to-hear music. But don't just take our word or it. Check out our video montage of just some of the dancing fools on this year's show floor. See if you can guess which dancers are random attendees and which ones are PR people who've been assigned to pretend to be interested in dancing these same steps ALL DAMN DAY. Fun!
While there's no shortage of games designed to keeping you humming songs in your head until all you want to do is scream, there's only one that will give you the warm fuzzy feeling that comes from giving back. That game is Ultimate Band, as publisher Disney today linked up with Linkin Park's non-profit, Music for Relief, to help raise awareness of disaster victims and global warming by letting players rock out from the safety of their living rooms.
Sure, it might not be the most altruistic alliance, but Wii rockers can nonetheless look forward to lending their rhythm-keeping talents during a Music for Relief charity concert, which has been added as an in-game venue. Curiously, only the Wii version was mentioned in the announcement, though a DS version of Ultimate Band is also planned. The game will also make a featured appearance during Linkin Park's own Projekt Revolution 2008 tour, kicking off this week in Burgettstown, PA, though we're not sure a game featuring the music of The Who and Devo is exactly poised to rock nu metal fans out of their fishnet socks.
Almost exactly one year after announcing that Disney Interactive Studios acquired his Junction Point Studios at last year's E3, Warren Spector – the famed game designer with his hands on everything from System Shock to Thief to Deus Ex – announced via his blog that his studio's first project will in fact be a "collaboration with folks from Disney Feature Animation and Pixar." He's not ready to say anymore (though he did say that he would "say nothing" just before telling us about the Disney / Pixar info) but we're holding out for some sort of announcement at E3 this week. Movie tie-in? New video game IP developed by Pixar and Disney? He's not telling!
Porting the game to Arabic was a no-brainer, according to THQ's Export Sales and Marketing Manager Luke Keighran. "There are only few games that would suit the Middle East's morals more than WALL●E," he told PC Magazine Middle and Near East. "The game depicts family virtues through a fun and adventurous story line." We guess that means WWE Smackdown Vs. Raw 2009 won't be seeing an Arabic port any time soon, huh?
Disney Interactive Studios announced yesterday it will release a video game based on its upcoming movie Bolt for pretty much every system currently available -- except Mac, natch. Bolt is the latest Disney CGI film -- no, that's not the same as a Pixar CGI film -- and stars John Travolta as a TV-star dog with an identity crisis ... blah, blah, blah.
Why are we even bringing up this totally random licensed game that reviewers will automatically give a 7 to? Well, it's only a few more weeks until E3 2008 and we wanted to remind everyone of last year's Disney press conference. Let your imaginations run free gentle readers, what horrible thing tied into this game could Disney make journalists experience this year?
Junction Point's WarrenSpector, best known for Deus Ex, spoke last week at the Game Education Summit in Dallas and expressed his belief that 100-hour games are on the way out. Gamasutra reports Spector expressed being tired of making games about "guys in black leather carrying guns," and that expectations for titles costing between $35 - 100 million are huge. He also pondered how many people actually finished GTA, noting a desire that players see the last level if he was going to spend $100 million on a game.
Not that he thinks going casual is the answer. He fears that the casual field is now "really crowded" and that competition, despite being in a considerably cheaper development field, is just as tough. The point Spector made is that it all comes down to a company differentiating itself from the pack. On that note, we'll hopefully hear soon -- like during E3 -- how Spector's Disney-owned studio, Junction Point, plans on doing just that.
Disney's Ultimate Band is reportedly heading to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. According to a screengrab from a now-infamous NeoGAF page of 360 leaks, the rhythm game is compatible with Rock Band instruments. It will cost $170 with instruments or $50 as a standalone game. A transcript from the screen can be found after the break.
Additionally, a trailer for the Wii version has been found (embedded above) showing the game being played "peripheral-free," which also reveals bubblegum covers of the White Stripes' "Fell in Love with a Girl" and The Who's "My Generation." Just a reminder: all of this is still a rumor, so don't get your hopes up until there's an official announcement.
Disney Interactive Studios and the company's Internet Group will merge into one unit, named Disney Interactive Media Group. Disney Interactive Studios has published games like Hannah Montana, High School Musical and Turok; meanwhile, the internet division was responsible for hundreds of online casual games and Pirates of the Caribbean Online. Clearly, the merger makes sense, and can be likened to when Sony Online Entertainment became part of SCEI.
Variety speculates the merger is so that Disney can report all its digital revenues in one spot, instead of games being lumped in with the consumer products. It doesn't appear many (if any) pink slips will be handed out in the unification, as these seemingly offline and online games divisions continue doing their separate things.
Source -- Disney Merging WDIG Group With Games Unit Source -- AllThingsD Iger memo
Zero Punctuation tries to be helpful this week by beating Turok with blunt vocabulary and attempting to help other first person shooter developers not make the same mistakes. The six minor points Yahtzee lays out ask shooters not to be cheap imitations of Halo, which itself is a cheap knock-off of ... oh, let's avoid finishing that sentence for the sake of being able to turn on the car tomorrow morning with reasonable knowledge it won't explode.
