Leveled Up News Report: 02.26.10

Posted by Joshua Richey on 02.26.2010

Nintendo unveils the DSi XL, don't hold your breath for the Unreal 4 engine, and did Capcom have to remove content from Lost Planet 2 because of the lack of disc space? All that and more in this edition of the Leveled Up News Report.



Why is it that the opening paragraph is always the hardest part of these columns to write? They're always the last part that I get around to. All it should take is a 'Hey! I'm Joshua Richey, and this is the Leveled Up News Report.' But that never feels good enough. Hell, I bet that none of you even read the opening paragraph. You just browse down to see what I talk about and go back to watching RedTube. And just like that, by complaining about not being able to think of an opening paragraph, I have an opening paragraph. Boo-yah!

Hi! I'm Joshua Richey, and this is the Leveled Up News Report.

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Nintendo unveils the DSi XL
At a press conference Wednesday morning in San Francisco, Nintendo officially unveiled the remaining details about the next DS to hit North America. The DSi XL features even larger screens (93 percent bigger compared with the DS Lite) and has a much wider viewing angle. Set to go for $190, we'll see the DSi XL in stores on March 28 in two colors (burgundy and bronze). (via cnet)

See! This is exactly why I've not bought a handheld yet. As soon as I do, a few months are going to pass and Nintendo or Sony are going to show off a newer, more badass version of the product that I just bought. The DSi is still a baby! It came out just last year. And now, just like that, Nintendo has thrown it off a cliff just as all ugly babies should be.

If I'm a PSP Go owner, I'm very nervous right now. Also, when can we expect the Nintendo DSi XXL? Fuck it. I'm waiting for the XXXL.

All kidding aside, the DSi XL looks pretty damn sweet. The larger screen makes it instantly more appealing to a guy like myself. I can't wait to buy one. (BTW - look at how much fun the people in this DSi XL trailer are having. I've never enjoyed anything in my life as much as they're enjoying those DSi XL's. That grandma loves that shit!)

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Nintendo: No Wii 2 for a while
Speaking with GameSpot during yesterday's Nintendo Media Summit, (Cammie) Dunaway suggested that gamers shouldn't be holding their breath for the next generation of the Wii, "I don't think it'll be anytime soon. Even though our install base is, at this point, five million households larger than the PS2 install base was at the same point in its life cycle, it still has a lot of room to grow."

She continued, "If you think PS2, there's been about 50 million sold -- Wii close to 28 million sold -- so it says to me there's still a big audience out there that we can access with Wii." (via 1up)

Despite what Cammie (pictured above) or anyone else at Nintendo says, the next-gen Wii discussion won't go away anytime soon. In fact, it might get worse. Nintendo announced during their Media Summit that both Mario Galaxy 2 and the latest Metroid would both be released this summer. Those are Nintendo's "big guns". Games like that are usually released around Christmas, and they're rarely released that close to one another. It's the equivalent of you blowing your load early, guys.

It could be that Nintendo is clearing the end of 2010 out so that they could release something big, like an updated Wii. Or perhaps (and most likely) they're just trying to release their big-time games before Microsoft releases Project Natal. Not because they're scared of it, but because the media is going to cover that like crazy.

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Unreal 4 Engine Unreally Far Away
[Mark] Rein told Kotaku that work is still underway on Unreal Engine 4, but that the release of the tech is "still a long ways off." How long off? "Unreal Engine 4 is designed for the day we get massively multi-core processors," he said, declining to say how many processors are needed to be defined as "massively-multi." The Xbox 360 and PlayStation three, which each have a few to several cores don't count. And, he said, the next generation of consoles may not qualify either." (via Kotaku)

FFFFFFUUUUUUU!!!!

Games like Batman: Arkham Asylum, Bioshock, Gears of War and Mass Effect are all running the current version of the Unreal 3 engine. Since the latest version of the engine usually comes rolling out alongside the latest next-gen console, most of us assumed we would be seeing Unreal 4 sooner rather than later. That's clearly not the case. Epic VP, Mark Rein, is even saying now that we may not see it until the console generation after next. Crap, man. I'll probably be in my 50's by that point. I hope I still like games when that time comes.

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Lost Planet Team forced to cut content because of disc space
Lost Planet 2 producer Jun Takeuchi recently said the developers had to make some difficult cuts to the game, but the content may find its way back to players through the magic of downloadable content. A Japanese Livedoor interview (via Kotaku) reveals that the cuts came from a lack of disc space on the Xbox 360 version. "This time, truly, the content that was cut was significant," he said, "and at the end, we had to wrestle with disc space." It sounds as if these cuts were made at the planning level, so even though the PS3's Blu-ray allows for more space, we'll see parity between the two versions. He did point out that Capcom "could be able to add that content at a later date as downloadable content." (via 1up)

Now hold on there, PS3 Fanboys. Before you go all "AH-HA!" at the Xbox Fanboys, just chill for a moment. If Capcom was forced to pull any content from their game because of disc space concerns, well, that sucks. We can all acknowledge that. But I have a hard time believing that games like GTA IV and Assassin's Creed II can fit on one disc but Lost Planet cannot.

Something about this doesn't sound right.

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What I'm Playing


Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3)
I tend to take my time when it comes to playing majorly-hyped games. High scores, higher praise and positive buzz definitely influence my interest in a game. Hey, at least I admit it, right? There's nothing worse than getting 40+ minutes into "THE BEST GAME EVER" and finding yourself wondering what all the fuss is about. (COUGHmodernwarfare2COUGH) I have this happen to me a lot. Now when you take that and the general disappointment that I had with the first Uncharted, you can see why it's taken me so long to get around to its sequel.

Now that I've gotten all of that out of the way, HOLY SHIT BALLS is this game good! All of those perfect scores and awards that it received were well deserved. The first Uncharted had so much potential, I just had lots of issues with it. For example: it took entirely way too many bullets to kill enemies. I was shooting guys in the head 6-7 times and they would just duck down below a crate. I also took issue with the sci-fi elements from the final act. It really killed the story for me. Oh! And I absolutely hated how every time you'd open up a secret temple (which hadn't been opened in hundreds of years) that there would be fucking soldiers in there! Hated that.

Uncharted 2 fixes all of that. The characters are great; the levels are breathtaking; and the game features the best dialogue that I've ever seen in a video game. Seriously, Nathan Drake may be the most likable guy in the history of video games.

I'm not sure how far into the game I am. I'm at the part directly after Schafer dies. But I love this game. Love, love, love it.


Aliens vs. Predator (PS3)
I received an envelope in the mail this week from the 411mania offices (aka Ashish's house). In it contained a Playstation 3 copy of Aliens vs. Predator. It wasn't an early birthday present from Ashish. Nope, I've been assigned with the task of reviewing it. I've not gotten to dive into a lot of it yet. I'm trying to finish Uncharted 2 before I do that. But I did pop the game in for about 30 minutes or so, and, I must say, for a game that's been getting as much shit as AVP has from the press, I didn't think it was that bad. Now, like I said, it was just 30 minutes. For all I know this could be the worst game this side of Fairytale Fights. All I did was play through one multiplayer map, but I kind of dug it. Perhaps this is one of those games to go into with really low expectations; sort of like I did the the G.I. Joe movie. I'm pretty sure that my first comment during the gameplay was "Wow. This doesn't look like complete shit."

I'll get into AVP more this weekend and have more about it next week.

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Richey Rants on: Xbox Live Ads

Remember back when Microsoft unveiled what the new dashboard on Xbox Live would look like? If not, it looked something like this...

Ahh. If only it were that clean and simple. The following is a more accurate representation of what it actually looks like...


I have no real issue with the fact that I have to pay $50 a year to be an Xbox Live Gold Member. What I do have a problem with is the excessive amount of ads that are scattered all over my dashboard. When Microsoft announced its big firmware update to remove the blade theme and to replace it with the coverflow-esque theme that it has now, we were told that it was done to "improve the Xbox Live experience." As it turns out, it was done to give them more opportunities to sell you Doritos and Burger King.

Now I could understand this if the ads were only in place for Xbox Silver Members. They're not paying the $50, so it makes sense to clutter their dashboards with ads. But for those of us that are paying $50, shouldn't we be able to avoid having to see those? I mean, the Playstation 3 doesn't charge you anything (...yet) and they don't even have as many advertisements as the Xbox does.

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And that will conclude another edition of Leveled Up. Now I know that I said last week that I would be posting my 'Top 10 Reasons Mortal Kombat Annihilation Is The Best Movie Ever' column on my blog sometime last weekend, but as I started watching MK:A again and taking notes, I didn't think my words would do it justice. I could write 'Reason #8 - Jax Punches a CGI Monster in the butt...a lot', but I'd much rather show you. So I'm still writing the column, I'm just also making a countdown video to provide video evidence. Trust me, it's going to be epic. I'm working on it constantly, and I blame the number of terrible lines in the movie for its delay.

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