Sunday, December 11, 2011

Sony confirms post-fungal-apocalypse title The Last of Us, due in 2012

At tonight's VGAs, Sony and Spike finally quit teasing us and formally announced The Last of Us, the next game from Uncharted developers Naughty Dog. Set in an America ravaged by a horrifying fungal infection that has left a few survivors in a desperate struggle for survival, it's super unique and you never would have guessed I wrote this before it was officially announced or anything.

The trailer indicates a very Uncharted-looking bunch of people running from some very 28 Days Later(-meets-demonic-broccoli) looking infected. Color us excited. The Last of Us is due exclusively for the PlayStation 3 in 2012.

Update: The press release is out, linked at the Source link below, and the official site is up at www.lastofus.com. There's not much in the way of information, but the presser does note that "The Last of Us is developed by some of the industry's most talented game designers including Bruce Straley, game director, and Neil Druckmann, creative director." The plot description goes something like this: "Abandoned cities are being reclaimed by nature and the remaining survivors are killing each other for food, weapons and whatever they can get their hands on. Joel, a ruthless survivor, and Ellie, a brave young teenage girl who is wise beyond her years, must work together to survive their journey across what remains of the United States."

Just like we said, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance developed by Platinum Games

Konami's Metal Gear Solid: Rising is now Platinum Game's Metal Gear Rising: Reveangeance, just as we were lead to believe by the trailer that leaked earlier today. Raiden, apparently channeling his unstoppable child soldier roots, has gone fully cyborg ninja in order to hack, slash and grotesquely dismember every single thing that exists.

We're not going to lie, the idea of taking a RAY model Metal Gear head on with a robotic lightning sword makes us tingle in very specific, covert places.

VGA 2011: Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance gets official trailer

Earlier today we learned that Konami’s upcoming Metal Gear: Rising game was getting renamed and that Platinum is the game’s developer. At tonight’s Video Game Awards, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was officially announced, and along with it, we got a look at Raiden’s all new story. You can check out the trailer below. What do you think of this direction?

Latest speculation about Sony's The Last of Us blames ants for everything

Oh, this is fun. We don't care if we're playing right into Sony's marketing plan by speculating on the nature of its virally campaigned title, The Last of Us -- we love a good puzzle. And ants. And lethal, cadaver-loving fungus. There has been a lot of speculation about The Last of Us' origin and plot since Sony's limited reveal last week, but it has consistently seemed clear that the game involves bullet ants, apocalyptic chaos and the Cordyceps fungus.

PlayStation Lifestyle has rummaged through the clues online and put together a slightly clearer picture of the game: The Last of UsYouTube account was created in July 2006 (yes, more than five years ago and before the PS3 was a thing), and in the same month it released a research and development presentation about group-animal movements on the PS3. The research leader is involved heavily in stigmergy, a concept of swarm behavior, which is connected to bullet ants.

Yes, it all comes back to the ants. At the end of Sony's promo video (above), we can hear a series of clicking -- which is how bullet ants communicate with each other -- and then a high-pitched, inhuman scream -- which is how bullet ants call entire swarms to one area. The scream can be heard meters away, even by humans, PlayStation Lifestyle writes. In The Last of Us, Texas and New Mexico are infected, and bullet ants live just south of there, in Brazil's Atlantic Forest.

For more information on bullet ants than you ever thought you'd want, check out PlayStation Lifestyle's research synthesis, and tune in tonight to our liveblog coverage of the VGAs for what we expect will be an official announcement.

Metal Gear Rising's story revised, now set post-MGS4


The newly Platinum-plated Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance features a story different from the one planned for the old Metal Gear Solid: Rising. While the game was originally intended to take place between Metal Gear Solids 2 and 4, the setting has now been transfarred to a time years after MGS4. This was done in order to let Platinum "show off what they can bring to the series." Without creating a time paradox and accidentally undoing the events of MGS4, we suppose.

Raiden joins up with private military companies for various jobs including "VIP protection, military training and other duties" as an unspecified country rebuilds from a civil war. "Little does he know that the stage is set for a clash with an enigmatic force of countless cyborgs."

This information comes via the official site, which is also the source for the new screens in our gallery. The site provides a detailed listing of staff for the title, including Platinum's Atsushi Inaba (the guy on stage with Kojima) as producer alongside Konami's Yuji Korekado. It could stand to be more detailed, as there's no game director listed.

Konami still has some revealing to do: the site claims that a video interview titled "The Truth Behind RISING" will explain the genesis of the Platinum/Kojipro collaboration, on December 13.

By the way, the site lists only PS3 and Xbox 360 releases -- no PC

The VGA Awards – The Results


Last night played host to the Video Game Awards 2011 on Spike TV, or wherever you happened to be streaming from. The list of awards is clearly as long as an elephants trunk, and the amount of titles involved for nominees is also equally long but now all the toiling is over and the results are in!
Of the four viewer voted categories, ‘Character of the Year’, ‘Most Anticipated Game’, ‘Trailer of the Year’, ‘NFL Blitz Cover Star’, the results were as follows:
  • Character of the Year: The Joker (For his performance in Batman: Arkham City)
  • Most Anticipated Game: Mass Effect 3
  • Trailer of the Year: Assassins Creed: Revelations
  • NFL Blitz Cover Star: Ray Rice
The main list of awards and winners are as follows:
  • Best DLC: Peer Review (Portal 2)
  • Best Downloadable Game: Bastion
  • Best Performance By a Human Female: Ellen McLain as GladOS (Portal 2)
  • Best Performance By a Human Male: Stephen Merchant as Wheatley (Portal 2)
  • Best Graphics: Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception
  • Best Original Score: Bastion
  • Best Song in a Game: ‘Build that Wall (Zia’s Theme) By Darren Kobb (Bastion)
  • Best Adapted Game: Batman: Arkham City
  • Best Motion Game: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
  • Best Independent Game: Minecraft
  • Best Fighting Game: Mortal Kombat
  • Best Driving Game: Forza Motorsport 4
  • Best Team Sports Game: NBA 2K12
  • Best Individual Sports Game: Fight Night Champion
  • Best Multi-Player: Portal 2
  • Best RPG: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
  • Best Action Adventure Game: Batman: Arkham City
  • Best Shooter: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
  • Best Handheld/Mobile Game: Super Mario 3D Land
  • Best Wii Game: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
  • Best PC Game: Portal 2
  • Best PS3 Game: Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception
  • Best Xbox 360 Game: Batman: Arkham City
  • Studio of the Year: Bethesda Game Studios
  • Game Of The Year: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Well there you have it, a long, long list of all the awards and the games that won them. Any surprises in there for you? It’s nice to see a game like Bastion deserving all the praise it has gotten, and seeing that games like Portal 2 cleaned up the show with 5 awards to its name! It is interesting to see that the best game on the 360 wasn’t an exclusive, like it was on the PS3. Obviously some things come as no surprise: best shooter being Modern Warfare 3, best RPG being Skyrim, and best Wii game beingSkyward Sword. Overall though some very well deserved awards and some nice unexpected treats too!