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A rare find amongst upcoming PSP titles, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is garnering huge amounts of interests, but today’s release date announcement may disappoint those ready for the previously announced May release.

Delayed until 8th June, and 18th June in North America and Europe respectively, the first Co-Op MGS experience is coming a little later than many had expected. Appearing in a similar time-frame to the excellent Metal Gear Solid 4, it’s apparent that Konami are treating Peace Walker as a fully fledged series release. This could prove unwise in the long run, especially with western markets moving away from the PSP rapidly.

Also announced was a new PSP 3000 bundle, with a movie download code, a copy of the game along with additional content and a 2GB memory Stick. The PSP itself will be an all new ‘Spirited Green’ colour.

Keep with Nukoda for more news on the upcoming game that makes us excited to still be PSP gamers.

Ask what game I’ve played more than any other over the past year and the answer would have to be Peggle. As puzzle games go, the simple but addictive peg smashing gameplay makes a good first impression. 4 hours later, you’ll be addicted to the fast paced, but tactical game from Pop Cap-developers of the much acclaimed Plants vs. Zombies and Bejewelled. With versions appearing on every major platform, from iPhone to XBLA to Steam, Is there room for a PlayStation Network version of the puzzler?

In a word, yes. If you’ve played any other version of Peggle before, don’t be expecting much new here. The adventure and challenge modes have been pulled straight from the PC version, direct copies ranging from the special abilities available in each stage, to the peg layouts themselves. The challenge mode still has you knocking huge numbers of orange pegs (The stage ending once you hit them all), or facing 1 on 1 battles against increasingly more difficult adversaries to name just two examples of the many challenges available.

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After apparently mediocre showings ate both E3 and PAX, Blur was not a game that was receiving a lot of hype. But somewhere between then and when the Beta was released, everything in the game seemed to click, and what we have now is a very polished offering. Here are some things you need to know.

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Desperate Escape is the content I hate to love. The previous content, Lost in Nightmares, took a step back to the roots of survival horror leaving me both happy at this attempt at change and sad that there was something lacking. 

In some ways Desperate Escape is similar to it’s predecessor: it lasts less than two hours; it suffers from clumsy gameplay; it offers minor additions to story; and two more characters are added to Mercenaries mode. In fact because of Resident Evil 5’s clunky controls I was sure that this DLC would be a step backwards. Cue another surprise.

Picking up from when you rescue Jill from Wesker’s mind control device, this chapter see’s Jill teaming up with Josh in an attempt to ‘get to the choppa’ via the Majini infested Tricell facility. With a name like Desperate Escape you would be expecting some kind of struggle and you wouldn’t be wrong. (more…)

I think everyone would agree with me that some of the most inventive games of the past year and a half would include World of Goo and Henry Hatsworth and the Puzzling Adventure.  As a gamer, I have been wondering when 2D Boy and Kyle Gray (of Henry Hatsworth) would be making something new.  So when the press release came out that they are joining forces, it just made me happy inside. While no games have been announced it seems like it could lead to some great things.  From the press release in the classic style of World of Goo:

“For years, giant corporations have been hurt by scrappy indie studios hogging the limelight with titles like Crayon Physics Deluxe, Braid, World of Goo, and Super Meat Boy. To those tiny, un-American, indie developers, Tomorrow Corporation would like to deliver a message: Your reign of terror ends… Tomorrow! ”

Over at www.tomorrowcorporation.com you can read the full press release and we can speculate now as to what platform will be used.  I would like to see some more high quality Wii-ware myself!

After a week of not-so-subtle hinting, Valve have announced that Steam and the Source engine will be making an appearance for Mac users. 

This means that Mac users will get access to Valve’s range of games such as Left 4 Dead 1 & 2, Counter-Strike, Portal and the Half-Life series as well as future games like the newly announced Portal 2.

Steam will launch in April on the Mac and will incorporate new features in keeping with Valve’s idea of entertainment as a service.

One these is ‘Steam Play’, a handy feature that allows you to buy the game once and still be able to play it on both Windows and Mac.

Another feature is cross-platform compatibility giving Mac users the opportunity to fight the PC crowd, after all there’s only so much stick a man can take.

Valve are showing full support for the Mac providing native versions of Mac games as opposed to simple emulations. “The inclusion of WebKit into Steam, and of OpenGL into Source gives us a lot of flexibility in how we move these technologies forward,” said John Cook, Director of Steam Development.

“We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac, and the Xbox 360. Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates. We fully support a heterogeneous mix of servers and clients. The first Mac Steam client will be the new generation currently in beta testing on Windows.”

Gabe Newell, President of Valve, added: “As we transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service, customers and developers need open, high-quality Internet clients. The Mac is a great platform for entertainment services.”

Mac and PC users under the same roof? Valve announcing two things in the space of a few days? Surely the World has gone mad. You decide.

Hitting the Xbox Live marketplace this week is a sense of deal ja vu. Yes, this week’s deal is the Call of Duty: World at War map pack bundle, now 1600 Microsoft points instead of 2000 MSP. So if you still haven’t picked them up yet you’ve got until 15 March before this deal disappears (though how long will it be until they resurface again).

In other news the Xbox Live House/Block party is running into it’s second week with it’s next offering Scrap Metal. Costing 1200 MSP, Scrap Metal goes back to the good old days of overhead perspective racing offering ‘explosive, action-packed missions’. 

Keep in mind that buying this and all the other arcade titles involved in the Party gets you 400 MSP and a month of Gold membership for Gold users. That and there’s a track called Awesomeland. I’ll let you decide on whether that’s an awesome name or not.

On February 24, Greed Corp was released on XBLA, and was met with almost universal indifference. “Another hex-based strategy game?” Queried gamers? “No thanks.” It’s a shame that this attitude of indifference is well-warranted, as Greed Corp is nothing special.

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To be blunt, Hellemental is a time waster and nothing more. The controls aren’t intuitive, the icons are confusing and the instructions are anything but clear.

The game looks polished, with more than acceptable 3D graphics and very fun, sparkly particle effects and a wide, well-realized diversity of creature designs.

The sound design is actually really nice. Music is suitably fantasy-like and the sound effects are appropriate and well designed, making good use of the speaker at all times, but that’s about it.

With all that said, developer Intersog seems to overreach on scope a little too much, way too much in fact. In a world that crosses Middle Earth with Azeroth with the Warhammer mythos, you control a wizard defending cities from elemental beasties.

By the way, they’re called hellementals because they’re, yes this is a quote from the intro-text, “hella mental.” This is the first of many, many moments that strain your belief in the game as entertainment.

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With it’s minimalistic Zen inspired visuals, Fox Vs Duck is the latest game from Studio FungFung, the makers of one of my favourite games from last year, MiniSquadron. Coined as a micro-game, Fox Vs Duck is just that, a simple pick up and play distraction that you’ll find yourself coming back to again and again.

The whole game revolves around a duck pond and the hungry wolf that surrounds it. Your ducks drop into the center of the pond and, using the accelerometer, you have to steer them to a safe spot on the edge away from the hungry fox. Simply steering them to safety is easy, but the appearance of random lily pads, rocks and ripples quickly make this task increasingly more difficult. The fox isn’t the only blood thirsty predator out to get your ducks, as a hungry fish is swimming around the pond as well. Simple, yet devious… just like all the addictive titles I come back to on the iPhone.

There are two game modes to master. Challenge mode is a timed game where each death will remove precious seconds from the steadily decreasing timer. Power-ups will add time and speed your ducks up to make this task easier. Survival mode mixes the gameplay up by taking away the timer, and instead giving you a set number of “lives”. Kill off too many ducks and the game is over. At the end of each game you are scored based on the number of ducks you saved, as well as the number who passed on to the great duck pond in the sky. Full Open Feint support will rank you on these stats and you can aim for the top spot either for the good or evil lists. (Note as of this review I’m #1 for both the saved and killed ducks in each game mode.. I’m an equal opportunity game player!)
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