BitSnark

In one perhaps one of the best tidbits of news to come out of what was otherwise a somewhat dull E3, Sony announced that their massively creative title Little Big Planet, will hit Western territories with due aplomb when it arrives in October this year.

I personally cannot wait for this, and if you don’t know what it is, click on the link below:

http://uk.ps3.ign.com/articles/893/893291p1.html

In perhaps one of the more unexpected conversions that could have been announced, Capcom revealed plans to bring novel, but flawed XBOX360 zombie hack’em up title to the Wii. Those of you however who are expecting a cut-down version of the game for the Wii are in for quite a shock.

The title itself looks to push the Wii from a technical standpoint with the Wii version replicating the ‘Swarm technology’ that allowed for close to a hundred detailed zombies on screen at the same time without any slowdown. While there are obvious visual differences between the two versions in terms of resolution and texture detail, the Wii version still manages to pull off an acceptable job of looking like the 360 version. This, combined with all the OTT violence of the 360 original, a new over-the-shoulder viewpoint and specialised Wii controls, will hopefully mean that Wii gamers will be in for a little treat this Winter when the game releases.

For those of you cheating types out there who screw honest folk out of victories on Wii Bowling by simply nudging the Wiimote backward and then forward without actually emulating proper movement, your time is up.

At E3 Nintendo annoucned MotionPlus, a small motion tracking unit that fits snuggly at the base of the Wiimote, where your nunchuk normally plugs into. The great thing about this cool little gadget is that it gives you full 1:1 movement, which basically means that the action on screen will be manipulated exactly by your real-time movements in the 3-D space that the motion tracker reads.

While this seems great, it will likely fall to Nintendo (as ever) to prove the finer points and generally produce titles that will take advantage of this technology properly. There has also been no word on what effect MotionPlus will have on older titles, but it will likely only work with titles that have had specific code written to take advantage of the newer tech.

Other details remain sketchy too, such as whether or not the shiny new device will be available seperately or ‘phased’ into new Wiimote controllers. The release date is also without confirmation, but will likely be soon as much of Nintendo’s late 08′ slate, takes advantage of MotionPlus.

More as it comes.

(and yes you can still use your nunchuk with the device as it plugs into the bottom of MotionPlus)

*cheer* With a personal wish of mine (and I know many others) fulfilled Rare have announced that they will release a conversion of Banjo-Kazooie for XBOX Live Arcade later on this year, and that it will also tie in with the newest title in the series; Banjo & Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.

Seriously people, who hasn’t wanted to see some classic Banjo-Kazooie platforming action on XBLA?

Colour me stoked, and if you don’t like Banjo-Kazooie then sod off and read an article about space hopping or something.

No i’m not that *special* I didn’t mistype the amount of players, it is actually 256 players online on the same battleground. Developed by Zipper Interactive, MAG (Massive Action Game – please change the title, please!) is a first as it allows 256 players to be involved in a single conflict, sub-divided into squads of eight.

In each squad you have a captain and below that you have various classes (medic, demolition, commandos) that you can be and gain experience with in order to increase your rank and your standing. While only a pre-rendered trailer was shown (getting sick of these), one with a level head could safely assume that gameplay wise the title won’t be a world away from the SOCOM series that the developers originally cut their teeth on.

And that’s all pretty much anyone knows at this stage, more as and when.

Yet more date confirmations abound, as Microsoft and the ever happy/trippy/mildly insane Peter Molyneux have announced that Fable 2 will be hitting our dusty store shelves sometime in October.

The title itself got a thorough airing at E3, with most critical press being overwhelming positive about just the sheer spectrum of things that you can do between being good or evil.

Everything from (un)protected sex, getting pregnant, getting married, having kids, having an affair, taking care of a pet dog that mimics your behaviour, learning weapon skills, buying property, taking on new quests…. and on and on…

I quite simply don’t have a whole day to go through what makes this game so special in the detail that I would like. So i’ll narrow it down to the first three points that shoot into my caffeine addled brain:

1) You can have a family and depending on how you act they will love or hate you and behave accordingly
2) It has drop-in, drop-out co-op (all the rage these days it seems)
3) You can get a sculptor to a sculpt a statue of you that can be revered if you’re a goodie, or pissed on if you’re a baddie

More soon.

Hot on the heels of the Resident Evil 5 E3 trailer that was present in both Microsoft’s and Sony’s showreel, news comes to our ears that not only is the title due out simultaneously in all Western territories (our Japanese friends get the game a day early) on March 13 2009, but that also we’ll be able to enjoy Capacom’s latest hyperviolent opus with a friend.

Available online only, the co-op mode that the game contains allows players to literally hop-in and out of the game and peform tandem moves that would be impossible for a single character to do. Players get to play as Resident Evil vet Chris Redfield or as the sassy African intelligence agent, Sheva Alomar as they attempt to root out the cause for the latest virus outbreak in a mysterious African town.

This newest installment appears once again to stick with the third person over-the-shoulder camera that in so many ways redefined the series and in doing so, returns players to the visceral nightmare of sprinting infected zombies, sack faced chainsaw wielding maniacs and of course some of the most satisfying weaponary with which to mess them up with.

I’ll finish with a quote from IGN.com about how RE5 is shaping up:

‘RE5 is a RE4 on steroids’. Cheap hyperbole maybe, but few can cast disparity on the pedigree behind this title and fewer still would bet against this newest installment being anything other than stellar.

Stay tuned.

God Of War III the newest instalment in Sony’s visceral Greek mythological series finally got announced at E3 2008. Disappointingly no further details or even release dates were mentioned beyond the pre-rendered trailer which depicted a very po-faced Kratos looking across crashing seas and ruined buildings with the tagline ‘In the end there will only be chaos’.

While the teaser was good to confirm the title’s existence, it did nothing else to excite or inform the senses and certainly, there should have been more on display than this.

Originally announced for the PS3 and utilising the proprietary ‘White’ engine made by developers Square Enix, the latest in the world’s most recognisable and popular JRPG was regarded as the one console exclusive least likely to leave the Sony nest.

That changed at E3.

Final Fantasy XIII is now due to release simultaneously with the PS3 version in all Western territories (with the lack of 360 user base in Japan no doubt being the reason for the lack of a Japanese announcement).

I’ll say it straight; this announcement blew my mind. Since Square-Enix began supporting Microsoft hardware, all that has been seen from the JRPG giant was new IP (Infinite Undiscovery, The Last Remnant) and Final Fantasy XI. And for a time, it would seem that 360 owners would get nothing but the scraps from the plate, instead of a taste of the main course, that main course being a ‘proper’ instalment of the Final Fantasy series.

The announcement of Star Ocean as a current 360 exclusive in retrospect provided some kind of indication, but still, this is a seismic shift for the Japanese developer. It’s one thing to stick the newest iteration of Dragon Quest on the NDS, but it’s quite something else to release Final Fantasy XIII on the very western XBOX 360.

The reason? I can only assume that development costs combined with a less than adequate PS3 user base has forced Square-Enix’s hand to create a XBOX 360 version of the previously exclusive PS3 title. More than anything, I want to see how they overcome the technical hurdle of storage space (standard DVD Vs Blu-Ray Disc) and what differences there will be between the two versions.

A megaton announcement if there ever was one. My only complaint is surely we’re way overdue to see actual some gameplay footage. After all, there is only so much rejigging Square-Enix can do with the same pre-rendered footage that they have been touting for the last two years.

There’s been a lot of boiling rumour about this one folks, but it finally looks like it’s all coming to a head as at E3, Portfolio.com interviewed EA boss John Riccitiello who was quoted as saying that they have ‘two of the most compelling MMO’s in development today’. One obviously being the long anticipated Warhammer Online and when questioned if the other was a KOTOR MMO, there was no standard denial or cheeky ‘wait and see’, instead it was a plain old ‘yes’.

Wow. While no details are known about the project at all except for the fact that Bioware is working with EA on the project, it is good to see them forge ahead with this.

More details as and when.