B3yond the Report 10.13.09: Uncharted 2, Brutal Legend, Bayonetta and All the New Releases

Posted by Jon Seddon on 10.13.2009

All of the latest news on Uncharted 2, discussion of why Brutal Legend deserves to make it onto your must buy list, the gorgeous Bayonetta demo, why PSP Minis aren't so mini in the price department, and much more!



I feel like a bit of a promoter this week with big shout outs for two of this year's most anticipated games with Uncharted 2 and Brutal Legend both releasing. Hopefully, this comes across as just being extremely excited about genuinely good product and not the raving of a fanboy. I'm also suffering though from a lack of stories to tell you this week as there has been a bit of a hiatus in the news the week after the PSPgo launch. Too early to say by the way if PSPgo has been a success or a failure at retail with Sony obviously calling it a big success. Anyway, I make no excuses about urging you to go out and try the demos for the games in this week's report, even if you do have to get a Japanese account.

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Uncharted 2 Out Finally Here

Uncharted 2 is out this week and is currently sitting on a Game Ranking score of 95.55%, which is a somewhere near the best games on PS3. To celebrate its release, here's a round up of everything Uncharted 2 from the last week.



Did you want the "special" special edition? Not the one with the golden in-game guns but the Fortune Hunter one with the actual replica of the phurba dagger? That's the one that you can't buy in the shops, until someone starts knocking these out on Ebay. A little while back Naughty Dog said that you would have to win them and to claim the prize all you had to do was play the Uncharted 2 Beta online last weekend up to 11.59 pm Monday Pacific time. There were 30 up for grabs. Winners were picked randomly, so no prize for being good at the game and the results will be posted on the PlayStation Blog October 19th. You did play the beta didn't you?

I expect most major new PS3 releases will get some Home real estate and Uncharted 2 is no exception with a new area called Nepal. As well as space to just hang out, there's also a card-based board game called Fortunate Thieves. Expect the usual avatar based rewards for doing well.



With the multi-player beta or demo of Uncharted 2 being available for just over a week, Naughty Dog published some impressive stats:

* Total Number of games played – 1,217,424
* Total Number of Kills – 92,110,787
* Total Number of Treasures Captured – 1,860,645
* Total Amount of Money Earned – $38,841,367,350
* Total Time Played – 9,905 days (or 27+ years!)


If you are one of those statistics and you buy the full game, multi-player will be supported post launch with more DLC. According to Naughty Dog's Multi-player Designer, Justin Richards, "What you'll probably see is more of the competitive type: more maps, more modes, stuff like that. The co-op stuff is hugely time-intensive and the size of it - the physical download size - is huge, so that's probably not an option." So just competitive multi-player DLC for now, but he later says that now the co-op code is in place, it will be a definite feature in their games.

You might not have even got this game yet, but as is often the case now, thoughts shift to Uncharted 3 and beyond. In an interview with Detructoid ", creative director Amy Henning said, "There is no limit to how many games we could make, as long as people still want to see more adventures with Nathan Drake." So do everyone a favor readers and go check out this game.

Brutal Legend Out This Week

I'd like to give a shout out to the other game that is out this week and deserves to sell by the bucket load. That would be Brutal Legend, which is hopefully a Tim Schafer game that not only gets critical acclaim, but also sells enough to justify EA Games investment and ensure that Double Fine get to make more games. IGN have the first review, which at 90% ticks the box for critical acclaim, but why should we expect this game to do better than Psychonauts?

Well if we ignore the fact that it is a good game, which didn't much help Tim's previous effort, EA have got the word out and every web site you read and every pod cast you listen to is calling it a day one purchase. The demo, which was released a week or two ago should certainly helped cement it's position in people's minds. Demos are risky and we could devote a lot of words discussing the various pros and cons of releasing them. In this case though, if you've played the demo, you are probably converted as it demonstrated a solid game under the hype and controversy surrounding the game. Then you have Jack Black, who is one of those characters that might be a turn off for some, but has a net positive effect when his crazy humor is channeled appropriately. Here he appears to give a rock solid performance as Eddy Riggs, the lovable roadie. Finally then you have the whole heavy metal story, which is just crazy enough for people to think - what is that all about?



If you can't get enough of the metal sound then 3 of the game's songs will be available on Rock Band this week:

Motörhead – (We Are) The Road Crew ‘08
Tenacious D – The Metal
Testament – More Than Meets the Eye

Just to prove there's no bias in my Brutal Legend coverage here's me and Tim S again

Bayonetta Demo Out in Japan

Platinum continue their run of controversial games with Bayonetta, which is the latest game from the creators of Devil May Cry and Resident Evil. It is immediately obvious that the game is influenced much more heavily by Devil May Cry, but the craziness has been turned up to 11. For starters, you play a bespectacled witch who has revolvers in her boots and a cat suit made of her own hair. If that sounds a little off putting, then you'll soon forget your distaste and be mesmerized as she initiates a special move, which sees her clothing become a boss bashing mega beast, leaving Bayonetta in a state of undress.



Originally planned for a 2009 release, it is another victim of the Modern Warfare 2 fear effect. That's despite the fact that players of the Call of Duty series are probably not the same demographic as this witch 'em up. Whether it turns out a better bet releasing closer to Dante's Inferno and God of War III will become clear early next year. Sega decided it was still safe however, to release the game in Japan this year and in preparation it has released a demo.

The demo gives you a tutorial and the chance for crazy boss encounters. It also visibly demonstrates the salaciousness of our heroine or is that the warped minds of Platinum games as you almost see those full frontals only for the image to vanish before your eyes. The enemies are as crazy as your special attacks with blood red lips with wings being subdued by an incredible range of moves with only the camera ruining the action with the occasional enemy coming from behind your point of view.



Eventually, as with all good demos you eventually come across the boss and this time you find that not even the ground you stand on is safe when it's torn out from below you. As you battle away, your excitement literally rises to a climax as the boss health meter drops and eventually you can launch your killer blow that requires that you are once again standing there with only naked with just the rapidly moving camera and pyrotechnics covering your modesty. Definitely something a cut above the usual games of this type in both visuals and style and its just a shame that we have to wait till next year to see more.

Lastly, it's worth mentioning that videos have now been posted with the game running with the 360 side by side with the PS3 version. I'm not an expert on frame rate by eye, but I can't see any obvious frame rate drops on the PS3 version. For all those people that spread scare stories about a PS3 disaster there seems little substance to back it up.

Here's that video.

Video Games | Bayonetta | PS3/360 Demo Comparison HD

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

PSP Minis Pricing

If you remember last week, I looked at the PSP Minis and whilst there was a good selection of games on offer, what was noticeable was the pricing compared to the same titles on the iPhone. For example, Tetris on PSP is $10 and will cost you about half that price on the iPhone. This week Sony went on record to say that any issues over pricing were purely down to the publishers and nothing to do with any policies in place at Sony. What isn't clear though is how much Sony actually take from each game sold and whether this is considerably more than the 10 cents Apple takes for iPhone apps.

One difference that did come to light was how much the ESRB charge for certifying the content. A title can cost $2,500 to pass through ESRB's hands, which isn't much but is an expense that isn't incurred when publishing on iPhone. If you add up the cost of a dev kit, the probably higher % taken by Sony and the ESRB cost, it's not surprising that cautious publishers are trying to get their investment back as soon as possible. Only time will tell whether prices will ever come down to iPhone prices. From my point of view though the real benefit of having games on the PSP is the generally improved controls a proper gaming platform delivers. This is worth a little more than I would be prepared to play on the iPhone - too many times have I bought an iPhone game and given up due to the controls.

PS3 Top of the Charts This Holiday Season?

With the NPD's available this Thursday the analysts are lining up to proclaim PS3 the overall hardware winner for September. Remember that this is the first full month since the release of both the new PS3 and the price cut. Michael Pachter went on record this week, "We estimate sell-through of 390,000 Wii hardware units (down 45% from last year), 350,000 Xbox 360 (up 1% from last year), and 410,000 PS3 consoles (up 76% year-over-year) as the price cuts for all three consoles spurred demand". Later Jesse Divnich from EEDAR agreed, predicting PS3 sales of 400,000, although he was less confident regarding PS3 format software with only Batman breaking the top ten. What does this mean for the end of the year?



Well Michael Pachter again comes to our rescue saving us from predicting the obvious: "We believe that the recent round of price cuts may benefit the PS3 the most in coming months, given that unit sales last year were only 1.5 million for the September – December 2008 period. The Xbox 360 has outsold the PS3 for the past 13 months, likely due to a higher perceived value proposition (the Xbox 360 "core" model was priced $100 lower than the PS3). We think that the PS3 will outsell the Xbox 360 in September, and may continue to do so for the rest of the year."

Whether the PS3 does perform as the analysts predict or not, it finally feels like Sony are back in the game, but they do have a lot of catching up to do to eventually become the number 1 player. Next year is likely to be the last big push of this generation's console war with both Microsoft and Sony once again going head to head in a battle of the motion-controlled games. Regardless of whether wands beat cameras Sony already have a formidable software line up with the likes of Heavy Rain, God of War III, Gran Turismo 5 and the SOE games. It's going to be exciting times for anyone that just wants to play great games.

And Finally....PSPfaux

It looks like those Chinese factories have been a bit loose with their blanks for the PSPgo moulds with an outwardly identical looking device already available in the market place.

Siliconera ran the story earlier this week about the Slide Panel Retro Gamer, which doesn't play PSP games, but will run old 16 bit ROM images and also plays movies, music and features a camera.

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After last week's PSP extravaganza, it's a bit quieter on the releases front, but there's still plenty of add-ons worth considering with the release of the last of the Fallout 3. Point Lookout is the best of the Fallout downloads from a setting and story standpoint, but Mothership Zeta is the weakest. The only full game for PS3 this week is Critter Crunch, which is the puzzler that took the iPhone by storm.



For the PSP there is a choice of Basketball games with NBA 10 The Inside taking on NBA Live 10. Earlier indicators suggest that The Inside is a decent effort with a Gamerankings score of 73%

Full exhaustive list here.

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PlayStation at Retail

Okay, so this week might not be the biggest week in terms of sales, but there aren't going to be too many weeks when you have to decide between games of the quality of Brutal Legend and Uncharted 2. There's still plenty of rubbish to avoid though, but if you don't end up with something brilliant you've either been extremely unlucky or extremely stupid with your money.

PS3
Cars Race O Rama
Midnight Club: Los Angeles Complete Edition
Way of the Samurai 3
Brutal Legend
Uncharted 2
Afrika
Fallout 3 Game of the Year Edition
SingStar Motown
Where the Wild Things Are

PSP
Cars Race O Rama
Half Minute Hero

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What I've Been Playing

The irony is that during the biggest release months of the year, I'm too busy to actually play any of the games. It now makes me wish that I'd been able to play through more games over the quiet summer period. I never got round to playing Uncharted or Assassin's Creed and their sequels are now looming large. Anyway, I did finish a game this week and started a couple of others.

Trine.Wrapped this up last week and I liked it, to read my review click here. One thing to mention which was absent from my review - I didn't think the PS3 version had multi player, but Lauri from Frozenbyte emailed me to say drop-in and out local co-op is actually available all the time. All you have to do is pick up another controller and press start. It would have been good if this had been made clear, but whatever, go and have a go and let me know whether it adds to the experience.



Persona PSP. I'm playing this for review at the moment, but as a Persona newbie, I'm struggling with it's conventions a bit. Many more hours to go before I could even give you an enjoying or not enjoying it comment. What I can tell you is that it's a remake of the PlayStation 1 original.

Star Wars The Clone Wars Republic Commandos. Previewed this at Gamescom, which is available here. Initially, you think it's Lego Star Wars without the building mechanic as you and a friend or AI traverse platforming levels collecting orbs and fighting droids. It quickly becomes apparent though that it falls well short of the production values of that game. The controls are significantly worse than the Lego games, which themselves weren't particularly well suited to 3D platforming. I was going to ask my wife to play local co-op, but after playing through the first few levels I wouldn't put her through the vague and unresponsive controls. The major problem is that your character wants to, for the most part, automatically gauge it's jump to the different platforms, but too often it doesn't actually judge the distance correctly leaving you falling to your death. At least death just means you respawn back at the last checkpoint, which is probably 2 steps behind you.



SoulCalibur: Broken Destiny. This is the full SoulCalibur experience in the palm of your hand with nearly all of the characters from the console games. You also get all of the character creation tools so you can create your own favorite Marvel vs. Capcom match-ups. I'm sure that's blasphemy for the Capcom fans, but I've never really been very good at the pure fighters. SoulCalibur has always flattered you with simple button combinations making you look like a super hero. So far I've only played around with the arcade mode, which pits you against a random selection of AI controlled combatants either from the starting roster or hideous random creations.

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With any luck my copy of Demon's Souls will turn up, but I'll probably have Brutal Legend by then so which will get my attention is debatable at the moment. What I do know is that Borderlands is out next week and so I'll be covering that game with as much info as I can uncover. I might also have worked out what's going on with Persona and be a little closer to finishing it.