Late Night Consoling
Last night I finished up Manhunt, and wasting no time at all, I immediately cranked out a pretty detailed review of the game. While the game isn't for everyone, I did enjoy it quite a bit. Take a look at my review if you're interested in my full thoughts on the game, although be warned, it's a bit of a long review...my longest by a pretty big margin, actually (it's nearly double the character limitation we used to have for ShackReviews). At the moment I'm between games, although I'm going to start up something new right after this goes live. As my Xbox review copy of Deus Ex: Invisible War won't be here until the end of the week (at the earliest), I'm going to jump in to either Metal Arms: Glitch in the System or XIII. Both look solid, and after the extreme violence of Manhunt, either one will be a nice, stylized change from the dark and gritty nature of that game.
| Wipeout on PSP? One of those rumors that makes me giddy like a schoolgirl made its way quickly around the web today, suggesting that Sony might be developing an original Wipeout game for their new PSP handheld system. Let's face it...even if it's just a port of Wipeout XL, it would be just awesome to have in a handheld package. |
| Microsoft Developing Shenmue 3? ...on the other hand, this other rumor circulated briefly today, and while any Shenmue-related news makes me excited, this one's just too outlandish to take seriously. The rumor, which even TotalVideoGames acknowledges in their write-up is laughably preposterous, suggests that Microsoft is developing Shenmue 3 for Xbox in-house, with Ed Fries heading up the development team. When there's any real Shenmue 3 news you can bet you'll find it here. Until then, I post this for amusement purposes only. |
| Nintendo's New Product? Okay, one more big rumor tonight, this one also by way of TotalVideoGames...the site is running a mysterious image of a handheld GameCube system that also plays Game Boy Advance games. It's safe to assume this is total and complete baloney, but it is kind of cool to see what one artist with way too much time on their hands was able to come up with. |
| A Technical Look at the Next Generation A very technical article is up at Ace's Hardware tonight, looking at the underlying architecture of Sony's Cell processor and making some guesses as to what may wind up in the Xbox2 and N5 systems. This is not an article for the layman, but if you're interested in the inner-workings of game consoles, it's definitely worth a read. |
| Syphon Filter: Omega Strain Delayed The game wasn't going to be out this year in any event, but GameSpot is reporting that Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain has been pushed back even further into 2004. The designers quoted say the decision was made in order to properly balance the gameplay (which is a good thing, considering that it's an online title). The game is now set for release on an unspecified date some time in spring of '04. |
| KoF 2000/2001 Censored? According to preliminary reports from the Neo-Geo.com forums, the blood and (ahem) bounciness of certain characters has been pulled from the North American release of King of Fighters 2000/2001. Thanks Slashdot Games for the tip. |
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| Play on Xbox Live, Win XIII Ubisoft today announced a 13 Days to Xmas contest, where 50 people will win free copies of XIII. In order to be eligible, you'll need to not only have an active Xbox Live account, you'll need to use it a whole lot, racking up more than 13 hours of online gameplay between December 13th and December 25th. |
| Mega Man Mania Revealed Those inquisitive people at Planet GameCube have dug up a previously unannounced Mega Man title for Game Boy Advance. Called Mega Man Mania, the game will contain updated versions of Mega Man I through V for the original Game Boy, along with unlockable extra artwork from the series. Details and screenshots are up at Capcom's official site. |
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| Wal-Mart to Protesters: Drop Dead Hey, way to go Wal-Mart...despite pressure from Haitian-American protest groups, mega-retailer Wal-Mart has said that they have no intention of pulling Grand Theft Auto: Vice City from their store shelves during this all-important holiday shopping season. Of course, this decision probably has something to do with the fact that GTA will no doubt be one of the best-sellers this year, but let's just pretend they're doing this because it's the right thing to do. |
| Holiday Game Sales Falling Short? Then again, maybe Wal-Mart's doing that just because there aren't any other really big sellers this year...Reuters published a story today suggesting that holiday game sales haven't been all that stellar so far this year. The reason? According to one analyst, "few "hot" new titles, slow hardware sales, high software price points, and increased competition for consumers' home entertainment dollars as newer technologies become more affordable." |
| Miyamoto, Iwatani Talk Shop GameSpot has posted a report from a talk at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (which currently has an NES retrospective), where Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto and Toru Iwatani of Namco talked about this little industry of ours. There's not a whole lot of wildly interesting stuff here, but both agree that the current generation of consoles provide enough power for anything they can dream up, and there's a funny anecdote about how Iwatani was told about Miyamoto's Pac-Man Vs. |
| Misc. Media/Previews | |
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| New media from Baten Kaitos and Donkey Konga can be found at GameSpot tonight, GameInformer goes hands-on with Donkey Konga and we've got a trailer from Tales of Symphonia up at FileShack. |
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| GameSpot has new media from Gran Turismo 4. |
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| GameSpot has new shots from Rallisport Challenge 2 and Wrath Unleashed and Team Xbox has a new trailer and screenshots from Conan: The Dark Axe. |
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| A new trailer from F-Zero: Falcon Densetsu can be found at GameSpot tonight, while GameSpy has a full preview of the game. |
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| GameSpot has new shots from the PS2 and Xbox versions of Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel and IGN has the box art from DRIV3R (PS2, Xbox). I usually don't bother mentioning just plain box art shots, but this one is really, really cool looking (despite the dorky name). |
