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Sam being the ever-subtle, ever-sneaky rogue assassin he is, was able to break into the premises of EA’s Mobile Division in Hyderabad by, get this, posing as an astute journalist for a newly introduced Indian gaming blog (or was it supposed to be Rediff, I forget). Some real interesting info that you might want to check out, and we’re not talking about just mobile gaming. But in case you’re wondering, no there isn’t anything related to Mirror’s Edge. Fiddlesticks.
This week saw a lot of interesting announcements, and we’re not just talking about the newly-appointed Microsoft India E&D Country Manager (but I’ll point it out anyway). Nope, Sony’s also been making the rounds this week. Aside from some game development and industry chatter, we got PS3 titles going for cheap and silly viral marketing videos to gloat about. Read on, scallywags!
With how successful the Ratchet & Clank (R&C) series have been for the Playstation brand name, it didn’t take long before someone in the Sony hierarchy decided, “Hey, how about a game with Clank as the main character?” A smart initiative no less, as fans of R&C (myself included) have been clamoring for a Clank-centric episode ever since the bubbly logic-smitten, Scooby-Do laughing tyke was first ever introduced. Hey, if Daxter can have one, why can’t Clank? High Impact Games answers the call, and with already one full-fledged R&C handheld title under their belt (Size Matters), you’d think Secret Agent Clank (SAC) for the Playstation Portable would be a solid no-brainer. In many ways, it is. But other times, maybe more often than not, it doesn’t shake the unnerving feeling that this futuristic, 007-spoofing adventure is strictly for R&C buffs only. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Activision showed off a rather brief (and boy do we mean brief) trailer of their next Marvel superhero extravaganza, officially being named Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2: Fusion. It was already mentioned that the game would be centering around the Civil War story arc (and possibly Secret War as well), and the new “Fusion” namesake is most likely hinting a much larger focus on team-up attacks/abilities and cooperative play. Witness how I’ve yet to make a Wonder Twins reference!
Comic book mainstays like Iron Man, Hulk, Spiderman, Captain America, Daredevil, The Thing, and Wolverine are present and accounted for. Strangely, the trailer has yet to reveal any of the known plot details, so much as if the Civil War motif isn’t even implemented yet. Guess we’ll have to wait just a bit more. One has to wonder if Activision ever decides to add Nintendo characters in again, they’ll actually let Ninty know before they do.
Embedded half-minute trailer after the jump, jump, jump.
What’s with the recent entourage of game trailers these days? Here we are, already at the brink of having every major gaming website about to be ghastly hammered for the next few days because of You-Know-What 2008, but now it just seems companies are taunting us unfortunate no-showers with so called “new info”. Those trailers that recently popped up for Mirror’s Edge and Fallout 3? Pfft, pass. Then you got BioWare’s Dragon Age: Origins. Sure, it was great to see the first ever official footage to this highly anticipated whopper of medieval fantasia. No actual gameplay, but it’s all lovingly rendered in the new Eclipse engine. Again, it’s the first trailer ever. Slack can be cut. Then those cooky, crazy Canucks released yet another one. Dialogue is more or less the same from the first teaser; some of the actual in-game segments is new, but come on! At least put a god-damn dragon in there already! Cooky, crazy Canucks.
In other E3 related news, Dawn of War II is looking relatively scrumptious. Draco grudgingly agrees, but I bet he really wants to see more dragons.
Shortly after its official announcement, Square Enix has gone ahead and shown off the first trailer to Chrono Trigger for the Nintendo DS. What have we learned so far? Well, let’s see. Akira Toriyama’s idenitfiable art style? Check. Yasunori Mitsuda’s memorable MIDI compositions? Also check. The Super NES quality-gaming grace we’ve come to know and love? A big red-marker colored check there. Assuredly, it doesn’t look all too different from its original iteration, but who cares? Time traveling, a fantastic battle-system, more than 12 unique endings, metal joints and silver points! If you don’t already own a DS, here’s Reason Number “A Billion and One” on why you should. If you have DS, buy another anyway and give it to your house pet.
Also, food for thought. What if Squenix decides to finally bring back Singing Mountain or Zeal Dungeon from the early prototype days as part of the newly planned content? Maybe even localise and pack in Radical Dreamers, while they’re at?
Following up on its recent Zapak partnership, developer Rocking Pixels has finally updated their official website with the first in-game screens of Love Story 2050. Does it look better than the accidentally-released screens of the engine tests? Sure, but we still don’t see what the big fuss is about it. There certainly isn’t anything that screams massively multiplayer just yet. Nor I doubt I’ll ever publicly blurt out “Sweet Baby Moses, is that puppy running on a 9800GX2?!” while eyeing anyone playing this, but technical accolades were never so much my main point of concern as compared to the general emptiness I felt with the whole art direction and design. GameGuru.in has an amateurishly taken cam video uploaded on Youtube, but there’s not a lot to decipher from there. As usual.
Anywho, we’ll let you guys decide for yourselves. Gallery pics of digital Harman-goodness after the jump!