Metal Gear Solid Latest News…

Last week I talked about how the Metal Gear Hype-machine had started turning. Well this week its gone into overdrive! Since Rockstar dropped GTA4, the gaming media have quickly jumped onto the MGS4 band wagon.
Yesterday’s press conference in Japan saw Mr Kojima hail the completion of the last in the Metal Gear titles. He explained how he had nearly given up, but stressed how he ‘had to finish it for the fans’. Oh we love you Hideo!
The presser saw the release of five new trailers. The awesome new theatrical trailer, a two minute game intro trailer and 3 short TV Advert style trailers.

The Theatrical trailer

MGS4 Intro

MGS4 ‘Regain’ Ad

MGS4 ‘Cat’ Ad

MGS4 ‘cellphone’ Ad

In other MGS4 news. It emerged today that the elaborate April Fools joke by Konami, showing Solid Snake running around as Altair from Assassins creed – was not a joke after all. MGS4 players will in fact be able to dress up as Altair, which will be unlocked by performing a certain task! Im not sure what it is, but my guess is completing the game – like in MGS1.

No News – Good News?

After a two week wait for any news regarding COD4 updates, fourzerotwo finally posted on his popular blog. Unfortunately there was no PS3 news 😦 No sign of host migration being fixed and/or no confirmation either way wether or not the new prestige rumours are true or false. fourzerotwo did however hint at a new stat based website to be included in the new IW website to be launched mid-june. This new website will replace charlieoscardelta.com and the current IW website. He also confirmed there would be no changes to weapons or perks after complaints from several players regarding the unfairness of the juggernaut and stopping power perks, aswell as the super-effectiveness of the M16.

When asked if he could reveal if IW were working on COD5, he suprisingly couldn’t comment.

The History of Metal Gear

The cool cats over at Gametrailers.com have released what they call ‘The Metal Gear Retrospective’. Its basically a video that looks back on the history of this powerful franchise. This is only Part 1, so expect another video in the coming week. The hype maching for MGS4 is really starting to roll, and I for one can’t bloomin wait! Enjoy…

Metal Gear Retrospective

Has the World gone mad?

I was browsing through Kotaku earlier, as you do – and there was an interview on there with Evan Wells, a developer for naughty dog who created the popular Uncharted: Drakes Fortune title. In the interview fans were allowed to submit questions to Evan, and one fans asked – Why can’t I shoot fish in Drakes Fortune? The answer…

We had hit reactions and even some death animations for the wildlife in the game but we chose to remove it. It was flagged as a potential issue by the ESRB and it seemed like a small concession to make in order to maintain our “Teen” rating. It may have also affected the rating in Europe.

How bloody ridiculous. As Luke Plunkett put it – So…killing hundreds and hundreds of human beings with guns and explosives and your bare hands is totally cool, but shooting some fish in a river can jeopardise a “teen” rating? What a strange and hilarious world we live in.

Linkage: Kotaku

You can read the full interview here: Full Interview

MGS4 Bundle will be released in Europe…

Complete with MGS4 and one Dualshock 3 controller. As you can see, its the 40GB version and not the 80GB version that is being offered to Japan & America. Not sure of the retail price yet, but its probably going to be around £279.99 – £319.99. The release will coincide with that of the game – the 12th of June.

 

New PS3 GTA Patch. Update 1.01

Since launch, GTA4 has had some mjor problems on the PS3. From the multiplayer problems – to the game save problems, its been very frustrating. Rockstar have however, showed their commitment to providing what they call ‘the best possible interactive entertainment experience’, by releasing the first update just 9 days after release. The file is only 18mb and takes seconds to download. It should automatically download when you try and boot the game. Here is the official statement:

Rockstar Games has released a GTA IV patch for Playstation 3 today that prevents GameSpy’s servers from being overloaded and therefore reduces the impact on those servers that were causing the game to stutter and lock up. We continue to monitor the performance of the game both on and offline and will provide further updates as necessary. We want to assure everyone that, together with our hardware partners, we continue to strive to give our fans the best possible interactive entertainment experiences possible. This update will ensure that everyone will experience Grand Theft Auto IV the way it was intended. We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused.

Some people still seem to be having difficulties even after downloading the patch. I myself, have had no problems. I will keep an eye on it, and let you know how it goes.

Killzone 2 @ Playstation Day

Killzone 2 was of course, a hot topic at Sony’s Playstation Day. Not much info was released, but we were given an expected release date – 3rd February 2009! yes thats right, a whole whopping 9 months away. Oh well, they did wet our appetite with this small promotional video showing some in-game footage.

 

Europe PS3 sales ‘overtake 360’

Sales of Sony’s PS3 have now surpassed that of Microsofts Xbox in Europe. In England, however the 360 is still slightly ahead. But not for long!! At the ‘Playstation Day’ held in the newly refurbished 02 Arena Sony’s David reeves said:

“The numbers are a testament to the strength of the PlayStation brand.”

He said PlayStation 3 had been outselling the Xbox 360 since October last year.

“We have sold more PlayStation 3s throughout Europe than Xbox 360 even though they launched 16 months before us.”

GTA4 News & Updates…

A few bits of interesting info has cropped up over the bank holiday weekend. Instead of getting absolutely trollied, as is traditional in England over this long May weekend, some people decided to hit GTA4 hard.

Liberty City can now be viewed using Google Maps! This handy application shows everything from mission start points to hidden easter eggs. Well worth a look. The map can be found over at IGN.

Liberty City Map

Are their Zombies in GTA4 multiplayer?

..and more importantly, are they Rockstar undercrackes he’s wearing!!

Rumour has it that the PS3 equvilant ‘achievement’ to the 360’s killing a rockstar employee online, is that you play the rest of the game as a rockstar zombie!! Although this hasn’t been confirmed by anyone yet.

PS3 Home Delayed

SCEE has announced that it will extend the Home beta testing throughout the summer of 2008 right up until the end of the year. So it looks like we will have to wait unitl christmas time to get a look at our new virtual living rooms 😦

President and Group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, Kazuo Hirai had this to say

We understand that we are asking PS3 and prospective users to wait a bit longer, but we have come to the conclusino that we need more time to refine the service to ensure a more focused gaming entertainment experience than what it is today.

Our overarching objective is to provide users with new game experiences that are available only on PLAYSTATION Home. Spending more time on the development and on the Closed Beta testing reaffirms our commitment to bringing a quality service, maintaining the Playstation Tradition.