Kotaku Originals: Insanity Ward [Original]

The onslaught of news this week was enough to send anyone to the nuthouse. Activision sacking Infinity Ward’s founders takes the gold, the PS3 clock error the silver, and Portal 2 a hard-fought bronze. The week in Kotaku’s original reporting: Activision vs. Infinity Ward Founders Ex-Infinity Ward Heads Claim “Orwellian” Moves By Activision Infinity Ward Founders Suing Activision Over Unpaid Royalties Video Games’ Team Coco Moment Where To Next For Call Of Duty? Infinity Ward Vs. Activision: The Battle For Creative Direction Guess Which Three Games Help Keep Activision Afloat Scandal Hits Call Of Duty Devs: What We Know Déjà Vu Surrounds Infinity Ward Rumors The Great PS3 Outrage PS3 Error 8001050F: The Nightmare May Be Over PS3s Suffering From Global Network Lockdown PS3 Failure, You Are Not Alone Portal 2 Portal Mysteriously Updated With Secret Radio Codes, New Achievement Portal 2 Adds Multiplayer Co-op, New & Familiar Characters An Insider’s Guide to Portal 2 Top Stories Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Policy Nixed on Xbox 360 Live NHL 2K Isn’t Dead, It’s Just Resting Valve Teases Upcoming Mac Announcement, Not So Subtly K Monthly – February 2010 Kotaku Talk Radio Bad Company 2 Devs Have Nothing But Love For The Modding Community News God Of War III’s First Big Boss Battle Is Unforgettable The Next Big Thing In Video Games Might Be Fear Of Embarrassment iPhone Chart Toppers: Final Fantasies It Would Be Like Call Of Duty, But You Would Only Control A Leg DSi XL Versus iPad: The Battle of the Bigger Versions Which Pokemon Song Do You Like Better? We Were Wrong About Nier Before … Or We Are Now When Does God of War Go Too Far? When Someone Laughs Mirror’s Edge On iPhone Doing The Canabalt Aion Patch 1.9: Changing Perceptions And Pleasing The Players Revisiting The Great Class Dash: TF2’s Side-Scroller A Number of Boom Blox Developers Let Go Ex-Team Ninja Boss Has A New Studio With A New Name Five Yakuza Movies You Must See… Play A Facebook Game To Help The War Effort On Your Xbox 360, Or Vice Versa NSFW: Heavy Rain Glitch Brings Playable, Accidental Nudity Rumor: Screens From Unannounced Justice League Video Game Reviews, Previews, Hands-On and Impressions Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Review: Judging A Book By Its Cover Works Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing Review: Remaster System Mega Man 10 Micro-Review: Capcom Had Mercy Match Defense Toy Soldiers Micro-Review: Finally, Mom Can Help Toy Soldiers Micro-review: A Farewell To Arms? Max & The Magic Marker Preview: For Those With Imagination The Secret Armory of General Knoxx Micro-Review: Hot Coals Over a Cakewalk Movies Alice In Wonderland Movie Review: A Bitter Underland The Crazies Review: Left 4 Dead In a Small Town An Eyes-On Sneak Peek At Tron Legacy… In 3D!!! Columns Well Played: Collateral Damage In The War On Piracy Speak-Up On Kotaku: Team Ninja, Splitscreen’s Absence, Used Games, And The Birthday Lord Twitterati: Gears of War Designer Mentions Something About Doing Things In Threes Stick Jockey: More Than Money, Licenses Give a League Control Tim Rogers: Japan: It’s Not Funny Anymore The PS2 at 10 The PS2’s First Ten Years: A Timeline Show Us Your 10-Year-Old PlayStation 2 My 10 Years With The PlayStation 2 The Road to the IGF Mile Marker 7: Limbo Mile Marker 8: Heroes of Newerth Mile Marker 9: Joe Danger Mile Marker 10: Shatter Roundups This Week In Comics The Tester: Episode 3: The “There’s No Cry In Team” Liveblog: No Goof Deed Goes Unpunished A Week In Comments Dammit Red Dead Redemption Delayed To May Your Red Dead Redemption Survival Guide: Listen To This! Kotaku ‘Shop Contest Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Next-Gen Cereal System Edition Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Worst Sonic & Sega Cameos Edition Winners

See the article here:
Kotaku Originals: Insanity Ward [Original]

The PS2’s First Ten Years: A Timeline [Sony]

In case you missed it, today was the PlayStation 2’s tenth birthday. Happy birthday, PS2! To mark the occasion, we’ve whipped up a little timeline charting the good times, and better times, of the world’s most successful games platform. Here’s a hint: you’ll need to click the above image to see it at full resolution

Excerpt from:
The PS2’s First Ten Years: A Timeline [Sony]

2010: The Year Of Better PlayStation 3 Games? [2010 Preview]

Year of the… No, better not go there. But next year the PlayStation 3 should have a huge year in North America, thanks to the arrival of God of War III, Final Fantasy XIII and better-than-ever third-party support. Granted, 2009 will be hard to top, let alone match, thanks to releases like Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Killzone 2, Demon’s Souls, Infamous, a solid PlayStation Network line up and some strong multiplatform contributions. 2009 was the year that the PlayStation 3 reached a more consumer palatable price point and got a whittled down redesign. But PS3 owners are getting two Final Fantasy games next year alongside original efforts like MAG, White Knight Chronicles, Heavy Rain and—fortune willing—The Last Guardian. And PS3 owners are getting their own motion controller, the PlayStation Eye enabled magic wand that may be known as the PlayStation Gem, plus some games to go along with it. Third parties appear to be on board more than ever before, with more PlayStation 3 games expected day and date with their Xbox 360 counterparts. (We’re looking at you, sequels to former Xbox 360 “exclusives,” Dead Rising 2, BioShock 2 and Lost Planet 2!) Let’s take a look at the PlayStation 3’s announced and expected 2010 line up, minus a few titles—we’re talking about you, Metal Gear Solid: Rising—that we just don’t think will make it here before 2011. Let’s begin. Note: We’ll be looking at every platform’s currently announced and estimated 2010 slate over the course of the rest of the week-and much much more . God of War III The third installment in Sony’s epic God of War franchise makes the leap to the PS3, adding to the list of mega-blockbusters in Q1 2010. Word on the street is it’s nifty. Gran Turismo 5 Polyphony Digital’s car sim is finally here. No more HD demos, no more Prologues. This is the real deal. Heavy Rain This story driven investigative mystery asks the question, “How far will you go to save someone you love?” And how far will the unique, graphically impressive Heavy Rain go in winning over PS3 owners? The Last Guardian Hate to say it, but The Last Guardian feels like something of a long shot for 2010. But we hope that Team ICO, creators of two of the PlayStation 2’s finest adventures, can impress us with their first PS3 outing next year. White Knight Chronicles Level 5’s traditional role-playing game finally makes it stateside. Yakuza 3 Sega gives North American and European PlayStation owners one more chance to recognize the beat ‘em up gangster greatness that is Toshihiro Nagoshi’s Yakuza series. The Japanese action adventure game joins a crowded Q1, but offers something unique. MAG Zipper Interactive, famous for its SOCOM shooter franchise, goes that much more massive with MAG, the 200-plus person multiplayer shooter. Will SOCOM fans follow? ModNation Racers Play, create and share your own track levels, characters and vehicles in this adorable kart racer that may evoke thoughts of LittleBigPlanet. EyePet This fuzzy virtual pet, a cute monkey-dog thing, is already being enjoyed by PAL PlayStation 3 gamers, but North America gets EyePet next year. Hopefully, that means some extra time to tweak the PlayStation Eye sensitivity of the pet sim. PlayStation Motion Controller It may be called Gem, eventually, but we know for sure that Sony will be tackling a new motion controller in 2010, one that relies on the PlayStation Eye camera and some smart engineering to get things done. Software support is initially strong, but we look forward to future original efforts more than retrofitted support. Final Fantasy XIII Square Enix’s long-promised, gorgeous role-playing game is finally here. Already out in Japan, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 game is the first multi-console release in the series, the first for Sony’s current gen console. Final Fantasy XIV Online The sequel of sorts to Square Enix’s first Final Fantasy MMO, Final Fantasy XIV Online gives the PlayStation 3 double the fantasy. Army of Two: The 40th Day EA Montreal’s co-op shooter leads a very long list of shooters coming in 2010. The 40th Day improves upon the first in many ways, including the toning down of some of the “bromance.” Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Another shooter bound for the PS3 is Battlefield: Bad Company 2, which will fight MAG for big, bombastic multiplayer FPS for the year. Bayonetta PlatinumGames witchy woman Bayonetta brings more Devil May Cry-like action to the platform, but with a much more attractive package. The PS3 version may get knocked for lagging behind that other version, but Bayonetta is worth playing on whatever platform you prefer. BioShock 2 Be the Big Daddy in 2K Games’ sequel to the mega hit BioShock. The prequel adds multiplayer, if you consider that a positive or negative. Dark Void Capcom’s oft-delayed jetpack hero adventure may have a hard time standing out in a crowded early 2010, but the third person shooting, climbing, flying and UFO hijacking sounds like a good combination. Dead Rising 2 Zombies require killing in Fortune City and you’re just the right guy to do it. Kill ‘em again with motorcycles, roulette wheels or moose antlers. Your choice. Dead Space 2 Visceral Games follows up on the excellent Dead Space (and very good Dead Space Extraction) with a new Necromorph dismembering adventure for old Isaac Clarke. Rocket boots? Yes, please. Dante’s Inferno If God of War III leaves you wanting more God of War, why not try Visceral Games very God of War-like descent into Hell, Dante’s Inferno. It has decaying purple boobs… Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands Another Prince of Persia? Yes! And this one looks a lot like the Prince of Persia movie that will hit theaters around the same time. And it looks not too dissimilar from the Prince of Persia game the movie is based upon. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II Just recently revealed, we’re mostly excited to see just how LucasArts fits this new Star Wars adventure into the timeline. Lost Planet 2 Get up in them giant bug guts with the sequel to interplanetary adventure shooter Lost Planet. Everything’s bigger! Mafia II Shoot things ’40s style with Mafia II, another game that should’ve been released in 2009, but will settle for a 2010 release nonetheless. Max Payne 3 Max is back and far less attractive to women. The paunchier, less follicled Payne is drawn back into the dive and shoot at things world he tried to leave behind him. Expect this one late in 2010. Blur Bizarre Creations gets colorful with Blur, a frantic arcade racer with kart racing-style power ups, but none of them banana peels. Resonance of Fate Sega’s futuristic RPG collaboration with developer tri-Ace follows a group of sharp dressed teens who have access to guns, but not clean air, in this forthcoming adventure. Aliens Vs. Predator Aliens and Predators settle their differences in this, the first Sega game that will actually take advantage of the Aliens license. Rebellion is at the helm again, which can only mean good things. Fallout: New Vegas Crap, they got Vegas too? We don’t know too much about Bethesda’s follow up to Fallout 3, only that gambling and mutant showgirls are likely to be involved. EA Sports MMA EA Sports challenges the UFC’s dominance in the mixed martial arts space. Can EA compete? Or will Dana White put them into a headlock? UFC Undisputed 2010 THQ sees more success for next year’s UFC Undisputed, now with additional Kimbo Slice. Alpha Protocol The espionage RPG! 3D Dot Game Heroes Dungeon crawling and role-playing go modern-retro in From Software’s PS3 original. Atlus brings it stateside next year. No More Heroes: Heroes Paradise Travis Touchdown and crew get the high-resolution, waggle-free treatment in this remake of the Wii original from Grasshopper Manufacture Brink Splash Damage’s squad based and class based tactical shooter is brighter and more promising than most, featuring a unique movement method dubbed SMART. Singularity Raven’s time-traveling first-person shooter was moved out of Modern Warfare 2’s way, but now lands directly in the middle of 2010’s busy first half. Perhaps that time glove will find it a better spot to find an audience…

Read the original post:
2010: The Year Of Better PlayStation 3 Games? [2010 Preview]

Zelda Developer Was Stumped By New Zelda Game’s Puzzles [Ds]

The next Zelda won’t be too easy for veteran players, the longtime head of the series’ development at Nintendo, Eiji Aonuma , recently told Kotaku. Plus, the new DS adventure will cater to Nintendo fan’s research-proven taste for independent women. In a brief e-mail interview with Kotaku in advance of the release of next month’s The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks , Aonuma explained that Link’s latest adventure takes an unusual route to satisfying and challenging veteran gamers: “One of our lead planners for the game is a programmer, so he has a different, more scientific or mathematical approach, so to say, to creating puzzles,” he wrote to Kotaku. Aonuma is the producer on Spirit Tracks. “Development team members, including [senior Nintendo developer] Mr. [Takashi] Tezuka and myself, actually got stuck in several places. So the dungeons and puzzles pose a different type of challenge than what we have utilized in previous games, and will certainly require longtime Zelda fans to approach each challenge differently. ” Getting more specific, he noted: “I believe that the latter half of the Tower of Spirits dungeon in The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks — [which] players will revisit throughout the game — has puzzles which require a different type of approach from those of previous games,” The chief architect of most of the major Zelda games, Aonuma has talked with your Kotaku deputy editor before about how to balance the creation of a new Zelda game to satisfy veteran fans and newcomers. A couple of years ago, I suggested that his team consider giving the player their boomerang and bow-and-arrow from the get-go. that might be a way to make new Zeldas more alluring to veteran series gamers. But never has he admitted to being stumped by some of the puzzles his designers have created. The game won’t all be harder. Controls, for one thing, will be easier, Aonuma said. I had asked him what his team had learned about the touch-screen controls implemented in the previous DS Zelda game, The Phantom Hourglass. That prompted this reply: “The one consistent piece of feedback we received about the controls in Phantom Hourglass was that it was too challenging to execute the roll move. You had to draw little circles at the edge of the screen to make Link roll. This is actually something we felt similarly about during development, but ended up not having enough time left in the schedule to implement another solution. In Spirit Tracks, this move is done by tapping anywhere on the screen, so hopefully players get more use out of it. ” Another tweak for the new game is in the Zelda character herself. In a change for the series, the Spirit Tracks Zelda takes on the game’s adventure alongside Link, in the form of a spirit. She’s not a damsel in distress just waiting to be saved. She’s an active adventurer. Aonuma said she was designed out of a desire among both Zelda fans and developers to have a stronger princess. “We recently received information from a survey conducted in the US that indicated that, among our female characters, users had a preference for those that were more on the independent side, such as Shiek and Tetra,” he wrote. He was referring to the Zelda-in-disguise incarnations of Princess Zelda in The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. “Making Zelda a more integral part of the game was also a goal for our Director, Mr. [Daiki] Iwamoto, so we set out with this element in mind when we started making the game.” Link’s different in this new game too, of course. He so often is. Aonuma didn’t divulge if or how Link will behave differently. Visually he looks like the Link in the GameCube’s Wind Waker and the DS’ Phantom Hourglass, but with the new game set 100 years after Hourglass, it’s no surprise that this Link is at least a new hero. “The Link character in Spirit Tracks is different from those featured in previous games,” Aonuma said. “He’s a brand new Link. The game does share ties with Phantom Hourglass and Wind Waker though. This is mostly communicated to the player through the Niko character, who appears in all three games. Of course he is much older in Spirit Tracks, and his aging conveys to the player that much time has passed across the timeline of all three games.” Niko? That’s the stripe-shirted guy , not the GTA guy . The new Zelda, Spirit Tracks, will be released in North America on December 7 for the Nintendo DS.

Original post:
Zelda Developer Was Stumped By New Zelda Game’s Puzzles [Ds]

Zelda Developer Was Stumped By New Zelda Game’s Puzzles [Ds]

The next Zelda won’t be too easy for veteran players, the longtime head of the series’ development at Nintendo, Eiji Aonuma , recently told Kotaku. Plus, the new DS adventure will cater to Nintendo fan’s research-proven taste for independent women. In a brief e-mail interview with Kotaku in advance of the release of next month’s The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks , Aonuma explained that Link’s latest adventure takes an unusual route to satisfying and challenging veteran gamers: “One of our lead planners for the game is a programmer, so he has a different, more scientific or mathematical approach, so to say, to creating puzzles,” he wrote to Kotaku. Aonuma is the producer on Spirit Tracks. “Development team members, including [senior Nintendo developer] Mr. [Takashi] Tezuka and myself, actually got stuck in several places. So the dungeons and puzzles pose a different type of challenge than what we have utilized in previous games, and will certainly require longtime Zelda fans to approach each challenge differently. ” Getting more specific, he noted: “I believe that the latter half of the Tower of Spirits dungeon in The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks — [which] players will revisit throughout the game — has puzzles which require a different type of approach from those of previous games,” The chief architect of most of the major Zelda games, Aonuma has talked with your Kotaku deputy editor before about how to balance the creation of a new Zelda game to satisfy veteran fans and newcomers. A couple of years ago, I suggested that his team consider giving the player their boomerang and bow-and-arrow from the get-go. that might be a way to make new Zeldas more alluring to veteran series gamers. But never has he admitted to being stumped by some of the puzzles his designers have created. The game won’t all be harder. Controls, for one thing, will be easier, Aonuma said. I had asked him what his team had learned about the touch-screen controls implemented in the previous DS Zelda game, The Phantom Hourglass. That prompted this reply: “The one consistent piece of feedback we received about the controls in Phantom Hourglass was that it was too challenging to execute the roll move. You had to draw little circles at the edge of the screen to make Link roll. This is actually something we felt similarly about during development, but ended up not having enough time left in the schedule to implement another solution. In Spirit Tracks, this move is done by tapping anywhere on the screen, so hopefully players get more use out of it. ” Another tweak for the new game is in the Zelda character herself. In a change for the series, the Spirit Tracks Zelda takes on the game’s adventure alongside Link, in the form of a spirit. She’s not a damsel in distress just waiting to be saved. She’s an active adventurer. Aonuma said she was designed out of a desire among both Zelda fans and developers to have a stronger princess. “We recently received information from a survey conducted in the US that indicated that, among our female characters, users had a preference for those that were more on the independent side, such as Shiek and Tetra,” he wrote. He was referring to the Zelda-in-disguise incarnations of Princess Zelda in The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. “Making Zelda a more integral part of the game was also a goal for our Director, Mr. [Daiki] Iwamoto, so we set out with this element in mind when we started making the game.” Link’s different in this new game too, of course. He so often is. Aonuma didn’t divulge if or how Link will behave differently. Visually he looks like the Link in the GameCube’s Wind Waker and the DS’ Phantom Hourglass, but with the new game set 100 years after Hourglass, it’s no surprise that this Link is at least a new hero. “The Link character in Spirit Tracks is different from those featured in previous games,” Aonuma said. “He’s a brand new Link. The game does share ties with Phantom Hourglass and Wind Waker though. This is mostly communicated to the player through the Niko character, who appears in all three games. Of course he is much older in Spirit Tracks, and his aging conveys to the player that much time has passed across the timeline of all three games.” Niko? That’s the stripe-shirted guy , not the GTA guy . The new Zelda, Spirit Tracks, will be released in North America on December 7 for the Nintendo DS.

Visit link:
Zelda Developer Was Stumped By New Zelda Game’s Puzzles [Ds]