B3yond the Report 01.20.10: Assassin's Creed Sequel, Sony Motion Controller Delayed and ModNation Racers

Posted by Jon Seddon on 01.20.2010

This week we take a look at the Ubisoft's new games, Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition and why it won't feature motion control (yet) and what we learned from the ModNation Racers demo.



Lots of gaming news this week including a few new games being announced by Ubisoft. Heavy Rain is causing a bit of consternation and that has nothing to with content, and everything to do with the cover, of all things. As well as that, NPD results are good news for Sony, Sony delays it's motion controller and finally we take a look at the ModNation Racers beta and how easy people are finding it to create some great tracks.

Top Stories

Heavy Rain isn't Porn, but it does have a controversial cover

Heavy Rain got a definitive release date of February 23 and now the hype machine for the game is really starting to pick up momentum. British print magazine, PSM spoke to Quantic Dreams recently and asked them the obvious question of whether they have produced a pornographic game. The answer must obviously be no, otherwise it wouldn't have been given a rating, but David Cage was keen to make the following point about the sex scenes. "There are a couple, but it's definitely not porn. We don't intend to push the boundaries and be ultra realistic in every detail. It's about real characters having emotions and doing what adults do when they fall in love."

David may be trying to stay away from controversy as far as downplaying the sex scenes, but Sony seem to have upset fans with the cover art for the game, which apparently doesn't compare very favorably with the European edition.

Here's the American box art, which shows the four main characters and I think actually looks pretty good.



The UK get this version, which although is probably more arty, showing some origami in the rain, it may not be as effective as showing a pretty lady on the cover as far as selling copies.



Anyway, Sony have sought to give Americans what they want with this statement on their blog, "We'll be doing that for those that would prefer the UK artwork. Keep an eye out on the blog around launch," which I take to mean that somehow you'll be able to get hold of the alternative artwork. Although not to the extent of their previous game, Indigo Prophecy, the differences between the American and European versions are definitely a talking point. Remember that Indigo Prophecy was called Fahrenheit in Europe and the sex scenes were censored from the US version. This time round it's just the cover that is different.

The last bit of news relating to Heavy Rain is that we're still apparently getting a demo before launch, which must mean any time now.

Ubisoft and their Earnings Call

You generally get a few nuggets when any large publisher tells investors why they should continue to invest in their company, but Ubisoft really did spill some beans last week. They told a story about disappointing results on the back of betting on casual DS and Wii games, which was a hard market for almost everyone apart from Nintendo. This year they will focus on more big, established "core" titles, which means 360 and PS3.

First up they said we should expect a sequel to Assassin's Creed this financial year, which runs to the end of March 2011. The big feature of the game will be online multi-player, which will be the first time any multi-player has featured in the series. According to reports after the event, the game won't be a canonical sequel to Assassin's Creed 2 and will once again feature Ezio. With the engine and gameplay finely honed in the second game, perhaps Ubisoft see this as capitalizing on that investment before the next generation of consoles begins to rear it's ugly head, which it certainly might by November 2011.

Splinter Cell gets a delay till April, which won't interest PS3 owners, but a couple of other games were also delayed. Strategy game RUSE was pushed back till after April and Ubisoft's MIA survival game I Am Alive is also pushed back as far as perhaps March 2011. Given that everyone had forgotten about it, perhaps the fact its still in production is a good thing. Also still in development is Beyond Good and Evil 2 according to Ubisoft France boss Geoffroy Sardin, which is contrary to when it was last mentioned in August 2009. Back then the game was said to be on hold. Beyond Good and Evil was highly acclaimed last generation and it's been a roller coaster ride for fans of that game, but hopefully we will now see the fruits of their labour and a much-deserved sequel.



Lastly, they also mentioned a sequel for Raving Rabbits and another Driver game coming in 2011.

December NPD Numbers

Sony sold 1.36 million PS3s in America in December, which was a record month according to NPD's Anta Frazier, "The PS3 realized it's biggest month of sales ever, and the first time sales have exceeded 1 million units." At CES Sony announced that they had sold 3.8M PS3s in the last 5 weeks of the year, so overall they have finished the year much stronger than where they started. Those sales nudged PS3 narrowly ahead of 360, which means that it has outsold 360 nearly every month since it's price drop, although it still has some ground to make up in terms of lifetime sales. The Wii once again sells an unfeasibly large number with 3.81 million units. Surely, every family that wants one must have one by now!

The full console sales figures:

1. Nintendo Wii – 3.81 million
2. Nintendo DS – 3.31 million
3. PlayStation 3 – 1.36 million
4. Xbox 360 – 1.31 million
5. PlayStation Portable – 654.7k
6. PlayStation 2 – 333.2

It wasn't such a good story for Sony as far as software though with only one PS3 game in the top ten. Obviously, that game was Modern Warfare 2, which on 1.12M units was just behind the 360 version on 1.63M. Given that Nintendo had 6 games in the top ten, with 5 of those on Wii, it doesn't really leave much room for anyone else. The only good point about the Nintendo dominance is that this year at least they are selling games that actually came out this year, with the exception of Mario Kart. Nintendo now knows that it must support its system with new software, which can only be a good thing for the industry as a whole.



The full list:

1. New Super Mario Bros Wii: 2.82M
2. Wii Fit Plus: 2.41M
3. WII Sports Resort w/WMP: 1.79M
4. Modern Warfare 2 (360): 1.63M
5. Modern Warfare 2 (PS3): 1.12M
6. WII Play w/remote: 1.01M
7. Mario Kart w/wheel: 936.1K
8. Assassin's Creed II (360): 783.1K
9. Left 4 Dead 2 (360): 728.5K
10. Mario & Luigi Bowser's Inside Story (DS):656.7K


Talking about sales figures, Sony also released the top ten downloadable items for 2009 and unsurprisingly, lots of people have downloaded Call of Duty maps. What does surprise me though is how many people bought Fat Princess. I was very much in the camp of being very excited and then I played it for a couple of hours and then that was me done. Good to see Final Fantasy VII in there as hopefully, this will encourage the release of more of Square's back catalog. Perhaps we could have Xenogears and Parasite Eve?

1. Call of Duty: World at War Map Pack 1
2. Call of Duty: World at War Map Pack 2
3. Call of Duty: World at War Map Pack 3
4. FIFA 09 Gold Pack
5. Final Fantasy VII (PS3/PSP)
6. Battlefield 1943
7. Fat Princess
8. Marvel vs. Capcom 2
9. Flower
10. Mortal Kombat II

Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition in spring, but without Motion Control?

Capcom have unveiled more details about their upcoming update for Resident Evil 5, which will be called Gold Edition in North America rather than Alternative Edition, which its still being named in Japan. In March PS3 owners will be able to buy a whole new Blu Ray containing the original game and the new content, whereas 360 owners will get the original disc and a code to download the new content. All the new content however will also be available to download for those that have already bought the original version.



The new content will consist of two new story episodes for the game, new costumes and a new mercenaries mode. The first episode, which will be available at the end of February is called Lost in Nightmares and features Chris Redfield partnered with Jill Valentine as they enter a mansion that looks very reminiscent of the house that featured in the first game and so many of the series spin offs since. This is set before the events of RE5 and you may remember it appearing in cut scenes as Chris remembers what happened on that fateful mission.

The second episode will follow the events as Jill Valentine and BSAA agent Josh Stone (nice name) try and escape the Tricell facility. This will be released early March a little before the retail version hits shelves. It will also include a heavy metal outfit for Chris (think Guitar Hero's Lars Umlaut) and a business suit for Sheva, which might be reason enough for me to pick this up. Thinking about it though, my brother usually plays as Sheva, so perhaps I don't want to ogle my brother's avatar.

When this update was originally announced, it was to support Sony's new motion controller, which might be called Arc, but then again might not. This was originally slated for release this spring, which is only a few short weeks away. To say that people were getting nervous about this is an understatement. So far we haven't seen a single game or heard of a single developer that have any new games in development for their wand controller. Sony also neglected to mention it when they spoke at CES, prompting fears that it would release with all the fanfare of Eye Toy, only to be forgotten about later on.

The fact that Sony have today said that it will be delayed till Fall can only be positive as they might now be able to get more fully behind the product announcing the games that it will need to be successful against Natal, which seems to be on everyone's lips. Don't expect RE5 to wait for Sony's magic wand though.

ModNation Racers Beta Feedback

There was a time when the kart racer was a staple genre and every year would see a few entries with that year's favorite mascots featuring. Apart from Mario Kart, it's a game type that's largely died this generation and to be honest it's hey day was probably many years ago when the likes of Diddy Kong Racing and Muppet Race Mania were taking the genre in genuinely interesting directions. The death of the mascot based racer was largely down to how poorly put together most of them were during the PS2 era, with publishers seeing them as cheap games to make that will probably sell enough to make money. Just as retailers are finding with Wii mini-game collections today, the public eventually says enough is enough.



That intro paragraph now sets me up nicely to say perhaps it's time for a return to that genre and perhaps publishers are thinking the same way, because this year there are two game vying for pole position. The first of those is Sonic & Sega's Superstar Racing, which will feature many of Sega's favorite mascots including AiAi, Dr. Eggman and of course Sonic. Have faith that this will be worth looking at because it's being developed by Sumo Digital who have brought us many great games including most recently the Outrun Arcade game.

The other kart racer this year and the reason for this piece is ModNation Racers, which Sony unveiled at E3 and whilst it is another kart racer, the selling point for this game is that you can not only design your own characters and karts, but you can also build your own tracks. For me that premise wasn't that enthralling when it was first demonstrated, but watching some of the videos of people making stuff on the PlayStation Blog, it looks pretty easy, which wasn't something that could be said of Little Big Planet, where creating playable levels was a serious investment of your time.



The video on the blog shows someone first drawing a track and it's literally like painting your track your track. The tools enable you to easily create undulating courses that can be made to bridge over existing tracks creating figure of eights and courses far more complicated than that. The video shows a track being made that ends up being a double deck lap, i.e. one piece of track is running directly underneath another piece of track. Throughout your track painting the PS3 will guide you to what's allowed and what won't work and gives you a running gauge as to how much track you have available to lay.

Once you've drawn your track, you can then make it more attractive by placing trees and water etc. and if you can't be bothered to do this yourself, you can always get the PS3 to fill in the details and then edit what it creates. It really does look like you could create something fun within just a few minutes. Obviously, the scope of this game is much more limited than Little Big Planet, but even so, the designers look to have done a good job in making it intuitive to use. If anyone remembers how much effort was required for Racing Construction Set on the Commodore 64, then it's obviously not easy to make a simple interface that creates great results.

This is all for nothing though if the game plays badly and whilst I haven't played it, it certainly looks like it's a lot of fun with some very good looking graphics and a fast pace. The UK Beta starts soon, so hopefully I'll get to check it out soon, but it's worth keeping an eye on.

Here's that video:

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PlayStation at Retail

Not very much to get excited about this week, but Dark Void might be worth checking out. It's not doing very well on MetaCritic, but it's by no means a terrible game. Other than that, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories releases for both PSP and PS2, but if you have a Wii then that might be the better bet, given how dependent it is on the Wii's unique abilities.

PlayStation 3
Dar Void

PSP
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

PS2
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

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Last week was almost as bad as the New Year week, such was the quantity and quality of the updates. This week the PlayStation Blog didn't even attempt to dress things up. They basically said here you go and listed it. To summarise if you have a PS3 then there was a demo for UNO and a Ninja Gaiden Sigma table for Zen Pinball. If you have a PSP you got puzzler, Luxor: The Wrath of Set for $9.99 and Dynogems for $2.99 and a demo for Lunar: Silver Star Harmony which is an RPG remake of a series that originally came out on the Sega CD. Might be worth a look.

Full list here.

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What I've Been Playing

I didn't get that much play time this week, but I did get to play the shocker that is Army of Two: The Fortieth Day on PSP. I obviously played lots of Disgaea, getting closer to where I'd been before I lost my previous save file. I think it took me over 90 hours to get this point last time and I think I've only played 50 hours so far this time, so I think I must have got a lot better at playing or smarter at leveling up. We also continued to play Borderlands, which I absolutely

Army of Two: The 40th Day. I didn't even realise that this was being released for PSP, but since there was a demo available I thought I'd give it a go. Be warned, this is not the same game as the console versions. What you're getting here is a top down shooter with you and your buddy sweeping through very small levels in a throwback to the classic arcade games. There's an element of twin stick control to it with face buttons acting as the second stick. Once an enemy is close though you automatically target that enemy, making it a messy mix of manual and automatic aiming meaning you never quite know where you're going to be shooing. Half an hour was more than enough for me to just switch if off and delete it.



SoulCalibur IV. I really want to be competent at a fighting game. I'm not talking decent, but I would love to at least know how to pull off all of Ken's moves and be able to do it nine times out of ten. Somehow I never seem to make the time to ever do this on games like Street Fighter or Tekken, so in order to be able to feel like I can do that I have returned to SoulCalibur, which was one of my all time favorite Dreamcast games. I'm not sure if it was an update, but when I turned it on all of the characters had been unlocked, which is something I can't remember doing. Currently, I'm trying to complete story mode as every character in the hope that this will unlock something cool.

Darksiders: Wrath of War. If only all years could start as positively as 2010. Regardless of what some reviewers have said about this game, I am thoroughly enjoying it so far. So what if it borrows ideas from Zelda and God of War, it implements those ideas very well and wraps them up in a story that is engaging and confidently told. I think about near to half way through the game now and there is still new things to find which then allow you access to new areas. Once I have all the equipment I'll then decide whether to backtrack through the levels and collect everything, but once you get the ability to fast travel, each individual area isn't that vast that it'll be a complete chore hunting down chests.

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This will be my last week I'm afraid as I'm off to pastures new. I'll be writing for UK site Gamerzines from tomorrow, but it's been a lot of fun writing this and thanks for all your support.