Valkyria Chronicles 2: My Impressions and Views
Valkyria Chronicles 2's hero, Avan Hardins
It's been a pretty interesting last few days for Valkyria Chronicles fans. Not only has the sequel to the cult classic PS3 title, Valkyria Chronicles, finally hit North American shelves and the PlayStation Network, but there have been rumours of a Valkyria Chronicles 3 title. The rumours of Valkyria Chronicles 3 started last week when it was discovered that Sega had purchased the domain name valkyria3.jp. These rumours further gained substance when a teaser site was opened up at http://code1935.jp/ which currently features a single image with the silhouettes of character classes and tanks from the franchise and a date, September 16th, which just happens to be the first day of the Tokyo Game Show this year.
Valkyria Chronicles 2: At last… or is it?
It seems like it has been forever since Sega announced that Valkyria Chronicles 2, the sequel to cult classic Valkyria Chronicles for the PlayStation 3 (PS3), would finally be coming to North American stores on the PlayStation Portable (PSP). It has only felt like forever since Sega has been pretty silent regarding the title, besides creating a website for the game and posted a release date of Summer 2010. However, recent posts on Joystiq and PlayStation Universe claim that Sega has made an official announcement of August 31st as the game's North American release date. This isn't all that unlikely considering that not only Sega has included a Valkyria Chronicles 2 section to their E3 Expo booth this year but the E3 Expo is still ongoing with today being the event's last day.
Yet another zany commercial from those silly guys at Kojima Productions
Over the years, as part of the promotional process for their Metal Gear Solid (MGS) franchise, Kojima Productions has released some really odd, zany commercials promoting their games. The first of their zany commercials was released to promote the PS2 and X-Box title, Metal Gear Solid 2, which, although short, featured a middle-aged business man, in a senior position within his company, hiding in his office building from his subordinates using some Solid Snake-inspired means of keeping your presence hidden which includes hiding inside a cardboard box (and walking across a hallway) and hiding in a cabinet. It was a humourous take on some of the popular features of the Metal Gear Solid series and would be the first of many.
Insomniac Games boldy goes multiplatform… for 1 new game…
It's a different time these days with gamers split between the PlayStation 3, X-Box 360 and Wii, it's a far cry from the previous generation in which the King of the Mountain was the PlayStation 2. With the amount of Wiis, PS3s and 360s out there it is no surprise that more and more third party developers have decided to go multi-platform to recuperate development costs and make a profit while also being able to get their games into as many homes as possible. What is a developer to do when there is a near 50-50 split of X-Box 360 owners as there are PlayStation 3 (PS3) owners (the Wii is another story entirely)? It would seem pretty silly for any third party developer to not make the most of this and double their audience and offer their games on both consoles.
The only disappointing thing about this trend, this generation, is that it seems the majority of video game developers that have gone multi-platform are ones who were previously closely tied to the PlayStation brand, i.e. Square Enix, rather than ones who have been tied to Microsoft and their X-Box brand. We can now add one more developer into the hat of previous PlayStation-centric developers who have gone the way of the multi-platform side, Insomniac Games!
Little Big Planet 2: Expectations
Little Big Planet is one of those rare video games that you come across these days that manages to be many things all at once and get it all right.
For a title that is marketed as a family-oriented platforming game, it is a little bit of a surprise that the game provides a gameplay experience that everyone enjoy. Yet the gameplay is only one part of the experience as Little Big Planet offers a little something that makes it really stand out amongst its peers: the ability to build your own levels and share it with other Little Big Planet players via the PlayStation Network (PSN).
Some might ask what's so special about giving gamers the ability to create at all on a system like the PlayStation 3 (PS3)?
Metal Gear Solid: Peacewalker Uncut
It's weird how back in the days of the original Nintendo, and even to an extent today with the Nintendo Wii, censorship of Japanese-made games for a North American release occurred every so often. I recall that a few of the Final Fantasy games, for the Super Nintendo, had undergone minor in-game art alterations, such as covering up a scantily clad female monster. Even today there are some minor edits made, such as the change of wine to grape juice in the Ace Attorney series. It's unusual, however, when it's the other way around and Japan gets a major video game title, created by one of its developers, censored. In this case, it's the upcoming Metal Gear Solid game, Peacewalker, that is seeing some light censorship in the form of the removal of a scene that would increase the rating in Japan had it remained in the game.
Valkyria Chronicles 2: The Extras
Sega is really going all out with Valkyria Chronicles 2, in comparison to the original game, in providing extra content and tie-ins with other products. In the first game there really wasn't much in the ways of tie-ins besides the cameo appearances of Skies of Arcadia's Vyse, Ayka and Fina.
Valkyria Chronicles 2 Release Date?
Sadly, Sega has yet to publicly announce an actual release date for the highly anticipated English-language version of the sequel to 2008's brilliant PS3 exclusive, Valkyria Chronicles, for the PSP. It has already been a few months since the game was originally released in Japan, where it has encountered quite a bit of success having nearly matched the original game's 180, 000 total copies sold with 140, 000 copies sold in the span of 3 months.
Valkyria Chronicles: Sega’s April Fools’ Joke
Every year on the first day of April we all get to enjoy a day filled with foolish jokes, but only just for one day, April Fools' Day. The weird thing about April Fools' is that sometimes the jokes are quite obvious, like say being given administrative rights on a forum, but others seem a little difficult to determine whether it's true or false. For instance, there was a bit of a hubbub over at FinalFantasy-XIII.net regarding a purported interview on Kotaku's Australian site given by Final Fantasy XIII Versus Character Designer and Director, Tetsuya Nomura, in which he claims that the main character, Noctis, of his upcoming PS3-exclusive title was gay and that the game would showcase some of Nomura's inspiration from The X-Files TV show. The thing is that a lot of people were fooled due to the lack of information that has been provided for the game. What was interesting was the reaction to the news on the FinalFantasy-XIII.net forums.
Pages
Categories
Blogroll
Archive
- September 2010
- August 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- November 2009
- October 2009