Late Night Consoling
The latest edition of the Game Over column at CNN/Money contains some new details on Nintendo's upcoming DS system, which were taken from an analyst report from American Technology Research. The surprising bits are that the system will supposedly support instant messaging of some kind, and contain a stylus, which will be used with a touch-sensitive screen (which was also rumored last week). There are all kinds of questions raised by this report. As someone that's been using a string of successive Palm PDAs for over six years, I think I speak with some level of authority when I say that gaming with a stylus sucks. While it's intended as a mouse replacement, the fact is that a stylus is a very clunky way to interface with any device, and the increasing popularity of keyboards on handheld devices shows that most people would rather type than write directly on a device anyway. Aside from point-and-click adventure games and titles like Bejeweled, there are very few games that are playable with a stylus anyway, so that would seem to suggest some additional, PDA functionality of the DS. I've been wondering how Nintendo is going to try and sell this as a third pillar for the company, and I suppose if it really did contain wireless networking of some kind (ideally in the form of 802.11b for piggybacking onto a wireless network connection) plus messaging capabilities, it would indeed be sufficiently different from the Game Boy Advance. There are a lot of unanswered questions about this sort of thing...E3 should be very interesting indeed.
| Metal Gear Solid 3 Roundtable, Previews, Online Info The embargo has been lifted on everything that was shown at a recent Konami press event, and so there's lots of stuff from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater online tonight. New impressions of the game are up at IGN, GameSpot, GameInformer and 1UP, and transcripts from the Q&A session at the event can also be found at 1UP, GameInformer and IGN (they're all the same, so take your pick). The event was the first time creator Hideo Kojima has talked about the camouflage system that's in the game, which will make up a big part of the gameplay. There are even plans for an online system for trading camo skins (but that's all there will be, no real multiplayer). |
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| Ratchet & Clank Online Computer and Video Games is reporting that the unfortunately named Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal (*shudder*) will contain online multiplayer. While the game's online support is still in flux, it seems that the game will support CTF for up to eight people, and vehicles that can be manned by two people, with one driving and another controlling the turret. A four player split-screen mode is also in the cards for those without a network adapter to use with the game. |
| Xbox Samurai Jack on Hold According to GameInformer, the planned Xbox version of Samurai Jack: The Shadow of Aku is on hold. The GameCube and PS2 versions will still be released next week, but sales of those versions of the game will decide whether or not Sega will release the Xbox port. |
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| SOCOM II Patch Details Specific details on the recently-released patch for SOCOM II are up at 1UP tonight. Despite the fact that the patch is very small (in order to fit within the same blocks on the memory card as the normal save file) it appears to fix a lot of important flaws, including stomping out collision exploits and wall jumping. |
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| Darkwatch Q&A HomeLAN has conducted a Q&A with Paul O’Connor, the lead designer at Sammy Studios on their upcoming PS2 and Xbox first person shooter Darkwatch. Among other things, Paul talks about the genesis of the project, its use of special vampire abilities and more. |
| New Releases This Week New in stores this week for GameCube are Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life and Worms 3D, for PS2 there's MLB 2005, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Jungle Storm and The X-Files: Resist or Serve, and for Xbox is Breakdown. |
| Misc. Media/Previews | |
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| GameSpy has posted a new preview of WWE: Day of Reckoning. |
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| Team Xbox has new shots from Star Wars: Republic Commando. |
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| New shots from Star Wars Battlefront (PS2, Xbox) are up at Team Xbox tonight. |
