Today is News Day, Apparently

As per usual, there's an absolute dearth of anything worth talking about (I like the word dearth, can you tell?) for days and I'm scrambling for something to talk about and the one night where I have something that I could probably work out on my own, BLAM, NEWS DAY.  It just gives me more time to get my big post thought out better, so there's no real problem with that, but still it is a little annoying that everything comes out at once, instead of over days.  But then again, that seems how it just goes for everything; I've noticed the same sort of trend in the Playstation Store Updates over the last few weeks.  Very few things come out worth of note for a couple weeks (which isn't to say the things that come out are bad, just not things that -everyone- is waiting for) and then, suddenly, one week pops up where it's like "Hey, here's a bunch of PS Vita games, Mass Effect 3 Demo, Binary Domain Demo, The House of the Dead III HD and the first PSP game you've seen on the store in weeks."  It's like nibbling at little bits of food all day and then eating a four-course meal for a midnight snack - it lacks pacing.

Regardless, let's get into the news rather than listen to me rant and ramble.  As you might suspect, the first piece of news regards Ni No Kuni:  Wrath of the White Witch, pictured above.  It seems that a few wires might've been crossed regarding the North American localization, as far as the date is concerned.  It's still going to happen, let me just assure you of that up-front, but it's going to be considerably later than anyone thought.  The nebulous window of "Early 2012" has been replaced with "Winter 2012" because....I dunno.  Translation is hard business, I guess, or like all Level-5 things, it just takes a really long time for unknown reasons.  My own personal rationalization is that the translation part of the localization is done by a single, dedicated guy who goes to his desk every day, chain smokes a carton of cigarettes and ends up with about two pages of progress.  But it's still progress, damnit, and he's trying.

Late as it is, it'll still be welcome, though I fear we might be exchanging one "oh god, there's too many games" periods for another, what with "Winter 2012" sounding a lot like "Holiday Season" where it, unfortunately, stands the very real chance of getting overshadowed by whatever AAA games are going to be thrust into the world around that time.  I guess we'll just have to see what happens in that time, but I'm still going to be looking into it for sure.  I don't know a lot about the game other than the fact that it is beautiful thanks in no small part to the special brand of magic that Studio Ghibli carries around with it wherever it goes.  Such magic is on the scale of Naughty Dog's magic over technologic wizardry, or Louis C.K.'s magic over being able to make just about anything funny.  That is magic to be envied, and everyone else should take note of these magics to try and develop their own.

Speaking of magic, Capcom seems to have harnessed the magic that allows action game protagonists (Or 'survival-horror' protagonists, wink wink) to shoot and move at the same time which is, as we all know, insanity and never before seen in a video game that involves shooting things that may or may not exist in some sort of grey area between life and death.  Resident Evil 6 is going to sport a greatly enhanced combat system that allows not only the above wizardry, but the ability to "slide, roll in any direction, and take cover" as well as including an 'enhanced melee attack', whatever that means.  Again these are all entirely new things that have never before been seen in a video game of this genre, so it looks like Resident Evil 6 is a hotbed of innovation and is most certainly not just grabbing every element from better, but less successful by comparison, franchises to strengthen its hold on the market and bring itself back up to prominence.

Snark aside, you can look at all this as either "about time" or "Awesome, sounds like it'll be a good game" , so let's just go with the latter opinion for now, if only for the sake of playing devil's advocate here.  Anyone looking to enjoy the next Resident Evil game can look forward to a campaign that takes place in a fictional area of China called "Lanshiang" which is, indeed, fictional and suspiciously not very Chinese-Territory-sounding at all but perhaps that's just me.  The game is also set in 2013, which, I'm not sure if Resident Evil games have been following our timeline fairly well or not, but for people who know more than me, this'll be the chance where we can all see just how long this situation with Umbrella and the fallout from it has been going on.  I suspect it's a little bit around 20 years, but I might be overselling it.  And this is basically with absolutely no knowledge of the franchise beyond reading a walkthrough (with pictures!) of Resident Evil 1 religiously like it was a book as a young'n and playing Resident Evil 2 on N64 like eighteen times.

I look forward to when it comes out to see the debates between whether it's better than the recently released and relatively well-reviewed 'Resident Evil: Revelaitons' [sic] or if the latter is inherently worse by virtue of being on a handheld.  It should be rather amusing for someone who is quite far removed from caring about RE as a whole.  But there does exist the chance that both games will be legitimately good, which is a little bit of a strange thing to consider, yet it is possible.  I probably won't be picking up either game in the near future (lack of a 3DS and all), but if I do, it'll likely be Revelations since it interests me purely because of the Raid Mode, which has been described as PSO (as in, Phantasy Star Online) like, designed solely to get my attention, I suspect.

And, rounding off things that seem tailor-made to catch my attention, Assassin's Creed 3 has just been announced shortly after the time I spent with Brotherhood.  While I haven't played Revelations (huh, two games with Revelations in the title in the same post), nor could I possibly do so anytime soon, I can't help but feel that familiar twinge of curiosity bordering on, but not crossing into, excitement at the prospect of trying that universe again.  At the prospect of seeing if it can recapture the excitement I felt for the first, despite the ever-stacking odds against the possibility.  Perhaps because I haven't played Revelations, I might no be able to fully appreciate just what to expect from 3, but I certainly know what I want, and I, unfortunately, doubt that all that I want will be fulfilled.

I don't know if there's a real reason for Desmond to hop back into the Animus after the events of Revelations (and indeed, after the ending of Brotherhood, I wonder if it would be a good idea), but apparently the internet thinks so, as it has been abuzz with the theories of just where Desmond's family line went after Ezio.  Popular theories include periods set during revolutions, particularly naming the American and the French Revolutions as high probabilities.  Considering the assassin line apparently gets better and/or more important the closer it gets to present time, for some reason, (Never mind that Altair was apparently running around with unbreakable armor and the best weapons seen by man after starting the Assassin order on the path that Ezio would eventually only improve upon) both of those are perfectly viable, I should think.  Unfortunately, both of those periods, in my mind, would involve some sort of gunplay which....well, after making extensive use of the crossbow in Brotherhood because it was basically the "SHUT UP AND DIE" button....I dunno what to think.

I do know that I want and hope, regardless of whether there's an animus element to the game at all, that we finally get to really, really flex Desmond's assassin muscles that we've been building up for four to seven games (depending on if you count the spin-offs as "Desmond did these" or "Only Altair/Ezio did these", though they don't seem very mutually exclusive).  I'm not talking free-running challenges, I'm not talking running around in ruins, and I'm not talking walking around the rooftops of a ghost town using Eagle Vision to track a mysterious red line (that may or may not be tire tracks) from Point A to Point B uselessly and pick up useless artifacts.  I want Desmond to go "Hey, there are dudes in that building, also an Animus or a decent base or something, guess I better go kill them" and then getting to do that.  This has been the entire point of the series, so I would hope three numbered titles or five full titles in, they would do this.  Here's to further speculation that will run rampant as we near October 30th - the day all, most or some of your Assassin's Creed questions will be answered.

At Ease, Soldier - Metal Gear Online is Retiring

As is always the case with online offerings for video games, they go up and eventually are taken down when the playerbase is small enough that they can't really justify keeping the servers up any longer.  The period of time between release and ending is always different, and for Metal Gear Online, the multiplayer experience that came packaged with Metal Gear Solid 4:  Guns of the Patriots, that end date is July 12th, 2012, exactly four years to the day that it first came out.  Or....July 21st, 2012 if you'd rather believe Joystiq over Siliconera.  (Protip:  Joystiq is sourcing from Kotaku, thus, don't believe Joystiq.)  Although, perhaps it's something different between the Japanese and North American versions of the game or some such shennanigans.  Whatever, I'm going with the 12th because that's much more thematic, okay?

This is a shame, in all reality, since Metal Gear Online had the potential to be really, really really fun, provided the perfect storm of things happened.  Either you played a game with all your friends (and indeed, managed to get in the same game with them) so you could just dick around, or you could find the one game out of dozens that wasn't hard-trenched into styles of play that you would never know exist unless you frequented Message Boards where these types gathered and launched into games from.  At least, that's what I'm assuming why there was a particular dearth of information on this 'Prison Escape" game type that I found myself playing on one of the few occasions that I actually loaded up MGO.  It was apparently more of an Role-Playing focused gametype in which you had a certain amount of the people be 'guards' who were allowed to use guns and stuff, and the rest were 'prisoners' who were relegated to being in a particular location and only allowed to use CQC.

All of the above was inter-personally mandated, of course, and as such was completely unenforceable, so you had to demand compliance to these rules or kick the people who didn't want to indulge from the game which, of course, required a vote.  It was a really, really simple matter to just really inconvenience these games and while I never did that myself, it happened in the game I was in, further confusing me as to what in the world was going on.  I left, obviously, to find a game that played Metal Gear Online as if it were Metal Gear Online, and while I'm not adverse to trying different types of things in MP games, really playing with the limitations put in place or the lack there of, I wasn't really too fussed to get shot to death yet again by a 'guard' after very nearly escaping the arbitrary building we were relegated to.

Regardless, there was some real fun to be found when you actually played Metal Gear Online as intended, and I do have quite a few fond memories of playing it.  No real stand-out times, really, just generally all the times I didn't suck at the game which were few and far between because, as I quickly learned, the people that played MGO played it because they were good at it.  While I'm not going to say it was prohibitive, it wasn't the easiest community to jump in and play with either and, being rather new to the online scene as I was (and still kind of am), it made it that much more difficult.  Though I suppose in retrospect, it makes my victories that much grander now, since not only was I overcoming the newness of it, but I was overcoming people who weren't as green as I was.  Though I guess the majority of it could be contributed to luck, namely of the beginner's variety, but still.

Regardless, there is apparently going to be some incentive to play up until you can't if you go by Siliconera's information.  According to them, the expansion packs and such that have been released for cost will be unlocked for free on April 24th, allowing for about a full month and a half of playing with these free toys before they're locked to you forever.  I'm not really clear on exactly what Expansion packs will be unlocked, but I would suspect all of them, unless some of them are simply taken down, rather than being sold or handed out for free which doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  So perhaps playing as Raiden, Vamp, Ocelot or the other premium characters will be possible, or perhaps not, I guess we'll just see.  I'll probably keep an eye out for it, but likely won't join in the festivities myself; the community update downloads will likely be far too much for me.  Still, I hope everyone that wants to has a good ol' time with Metal Gear Online 2.0 while it lasts and we eagerly wait for Metal Gear Online 3.0, whenever that comes out.

Drakerider Trademark Filed by Squeenix

So, Siliconera has informed me (and everyone else that visits them, of course) that Squeenix has put in a trademark for two things:  Drakerider and Blood of Chaos which might be for the same thing or for two different things, it's not really certain.  Now, more or less, you see stuff like that, and have no idea what to expect since it's obviously not the same name of an existing IP or anything, but Squeenix -has- published two games that deal with riding dragons before (as is inferred by the title of Drakerider, literally rider of drakes aka dragons) and as you know by now, I am all over that shit.  The above pictured Drakengard is something I've gone on and on about for several posts, so obviously I am very very excited for what this might bring.  Yet, at the same time, I am also very very worried at the prospect of it all since if it were the fabled continuation of the Drakengard series in some fashion, who knows what the quality is going to be like?

Drakengard the first was a terribly flawed game as far as actual gameplay goes, but the story was absolutely fantastic for as far as it was willing to go, which was likely a lot farther than most people wanted to go while playing it.  Drakengard 2 was absolutely terrible because it was a by-the-numbers anime-RPG-bullshit-wannabe that had one single good thing going for it that they proceeded to piss away over the course of the actual game itself.  Then you have Nier which is included in the franchise despite a notable lack of dragons and the riding thereof which was absolutely fantastic.  It's sporadic, is the point I'm trying to make and while I'm not trying to point fingers here, Drakengard and Nier both had the same Director in Yoko Taro where Drakengard 2's director was Akira Yasui whose involvement in Drakengard prior to being the director of the sequel was being the Chief Designer of Drakengard.  Quite a big jump he got to make and I'm kind of prepared to say that maybe he wasn't quite ready for it.  Just possibly.

I do think Yoko Taro is still with Squeenix, even after the whole of the nonsense that happened with Cavia in being absorbed by this developer who became this one where some of the team scattered or somesuch, but I also believe he's fairly busy with a Dragon Quest related project.  So whether they'd be willing to pull him off that and give him the reigns to yet another installment of insanity is in question, and even if they do, it's hard telling if that will indicate success right off.  Yet in the perfect scenario I've got going in my mind here is that this is what's going to happen, and a PS3 and/or Vita project will come of it and it will be awesome and Caim will be in it and kill a ton of dudes and and and....

Of course, perfect scenarios pretty much never happen, so I'm forced to look at the other theory in play here.  Blood of Bahamut is apparently a thing, which I have never heard of, and it's an Action RPG that was also published by Squeenix for the DS in 2009.  I probably didn't know of it because it never made its way over here in the states, despite Ignition Software offering to localize it for Squeenix because Squeenix is just dumb, I guess.  Were it a Wii game, I could understand, but the DS doesn't have the sort of exaggerated split between First and Third party purchases that I know of, so it's not like the game didn't have a chance of doing well, but I guess they didn't think it did.  Regardless, Blood of Bahamut, understandably, had dragons in it as well, so assuming that both Drakerider and Blood of Chaos are Trademarked for a sequel to Blood of Bahamut is not only possible, it's likely the -more- possible option here.  I'd imagine this project would be for the 3DS rather than the DS, obviously, and a lot of emphasis would be put on the giant monsters popping out in Threeeee Deeeeee and such, and a localization could apparently be questionable.

Still, there's a chance that the two terms could be for separate things and even if they're not I guess that wouldn't be such a bad thing.  I'd prefer no more Drakengard series games over another terrible one any day, and the worry of whether another game would come out terrible would likely drive me mad, but with that way lies the possibility of yet another fantastic game.  Which is the other part that would drive me batty; sitting by through the entire development, fervently scanning for any such update on its progress or indication of quality and micro-analyzing it all....Yeah.  We'll just have to see what turns up out of all this.  It could be one game, could be two, and said games could be terrible, amazing, and/or not even released over here, so it's a bit silly trying to work up a whole lot of excitement or speculation either way.

Music! What I've Been Listening to Lately Edition, Take Two

I'm going to level with you guys:  I am absolutely beat.  I probably overextended myself a bit today doing some work for family and friends and since I got home, I've been feeling awful.  I haven't really been able to compose my thoughts well enough to write and there is, again, not really a whole lot to write about.  I hate to fall back on doing another music post so soon after the last one, but these are fun and good to write at the moment since there's little else that I'd rather do than curl up in bed and listen to some nice tunes.  I might just do that come bedtime and get back to the normal routine tomorrow; hopefully do enough of Alpha Protocol that I can effectively write about it, instead of imagining all the cool stuff that's going to happen.  Because cool stuff -is- going to happen, you know.  I believe it.

You might recognize the first song is "Sleepwalking" by Photek (featuring Linche) from the Sleeping Dogs post from the other day because it is, of course, what started me in listening to it.  I can't really pin down just what it is about the song that I like, though I really like the vocals and the low-key of the entire thing.  The first time I listened to the whole thing, a good ways in I was afraid it was going to turn into dubstep and have this sickdrop, as they call it, in the middle then do some sort of breakdown that would ruin the entire thing.  But instead it just remains fairly moody throughout which, while it won't always strike a chord with me, it has been doing as much lately.  Still, it's a fairly nice song regardless, and I've been enjoying it quite a lot.

I gotta hand it to whoever put together the reveal trailer for Sleeping Dogs because they picked the perfect song for it, really.  Despite the laid-back nature of the song, the low mood of it, it really lends itself well to some real action-packed scenes like are present in the trailer.  It's very theme and/or cinema-friendly really, which is just another thing in its favor.  There's really not a lot else that can be said about the song really - I just like listening to it and relaxing to/from it.  I could probably set it up through some sort of speaker system in a lounge, grab a chair and a book and have a good few hours with it on in the background while I catch up on some reading.....I would need a lounge for that first.  Still, a man can dream.

I've pretty often thought that it really doesn't matter, for me, the contents nor the context of a song, but whether or not I like the mood of it.  Which is fairly evident in my writing, since I'll always tell you the mood I -get- from certain songs.  So I like to think that it's this mindset that allows me to un-ironically enjoy 'pop' songs without worrying that I'm being too mainstream or something otherwise awful if you've ever been a music snob.  Generally, I just turn on the radio nowadays and flip through a few stations (I have a SiriusXM radio which makes it a little better, selection-wise) between the pop stations and the rock stations and I just stop on whatever sounds good.  That's pretty much how I found "Domino" by someone named Jessie J, and it's just one of those songs that has a good mood that I can enjoy.

Obviously, some might worry that enjoying that means certain things that aren't positive since it's popular, but I do enjoy it.  Again, more for the mood and feel of the song, the upbeat nature it has, than the actual content of it or anything like that.  Which isn't me even protesting too much or anything like that, nor does it need the qualifier.  I'm basically just rambling because with a song like this, there's only so many ways you can say "It's upbeat and I like that, and it's got a generally happy mood and sound and I like that too!"  The vocals are decent to good at parts and the song is fairly basic in itself, but there's just that little fun spark in it that makes it something you (or at least I) want to listen to.

As I said, I generally switch between pop and rock stations to find something that sates my musical desires at any given moment and that's how I found the last song here as well.  Finishing us out with a little bit of rock, this is a song that is actually a cover, and the band doing it is a band that I hadn't known about prior to hearing this.  Aside from hearing their name a whole bunch in years prior, but I could've sworn they were in a different genre of music then.  They could have been, of course, since I haven't looked into them (I care about songs, not bands or artists), but this is definitely rock and since then, I've heard a few more songs by them that are in the same genre.  Regardless, Five Finger Death Punch is a pretty neat band name and this cover of "Bad Company" is pretty good to listen to for me.

It's really really good at points with the vocals and while the quality (and this is song-side, as far as I can tell, not to do with the video) isn't spectacular, it offers quite enough to be enjoyable to get the blood pumping as they say.  Though, I've heard quite a few other songs I should've put here instead, but I couldn't think about them at the time, so that would suggest there's a reason I went with this one, eh?  It's a good song in its own right and maybe I just went with it because of the band name since, again, Five Finger Death Punch is a pretty great band name.

That's been kind of a peek into what I've been listening to a lot lately.  Hopefully you can enjoy at least some of it as well (if nothing else, then Sleepwalking at least, since I really think that's a fairly genuinely good song) and maybe it'll even expand your musical horizons a little bit.  Or maybe you've heard all these songs before, don't like them and your horizons are perfectly broad the way they are.  I dunno.  But this is what I wanted to write about tonight, eventually, when I was actually able to sit down and get to writing, so that's what we got.

Radiant Historia Gets the Atlus Reprint Treatment

It might be just me, but I've forever cemented the words "Atlus" and "reprint" into a portion of my mind that triggers awareness whenever I see them in close proximity to one another.  I'm not sure why of course, but I'm guessing it's for good reason, so it's not been a bother.  And while I was interested in Radiant Historia before, thanks to a little positive word of mouth, the recent question Atlus asked directly, "Assuming a reprint could happen, people would buy it, right?" to which a no-doubt large amount of people said "YES" to, myself included.  Because my interest in the game has been heightened for some time, though I guess not to the point where I actually remember to look for it.  Anywhere.  Possibly because I am, as they say, "a dumb".  (I say that, not 'they'.)

Well, just yesterday it was announced that Radiant Historia will be getting that reprint, though I'm doubtful that it surprises anyone.  It might annoy some people who have been holding on to their copy, planning to sell it for big bucks, but I think we can all agree that this is a good thing.  For one, it's an apparently great RPG which have sort of become rare lately, or so we're told, and second this is one of those rare DS games that I really, really, really want to have despite it not being on my handheld of choice.  I'm told it also deals with time travel which another great RPG is famous for, leaving me even more reason to be intrigued.  Beyond all that, however, I really don't know a lot about the game and most of that is intentional honestly.  This is apparently one of those gems that doesn't come around a lot and with this second chance for me to realistically find it, I'm more than willing to jump on that blindly, if just to satisfy the curiosity I've personally had with it and not even to see if it's worth the hype that's been put out for it.

The only issue here is that it's slated to come out in late March alongside everything else that's been crammed into these first few months of the new year as we (myself and fellow gamers everywhere) have been complaining about for a bit here.  In March alone, I am already overdrawn on my time and money between Binary Domain, Yakuza:  Dead Souls, Gravity Rush (if it hits in March rather than April which I'm not sure on) and no doubt other things that I'm forgetting.  Coming off several months where I didn't buy a single game because I have too many games already, this is pure and complete torture on scales that I can't even comprehend yet.  I'm not sure how I'm going to manage it, but I guess I'll have to grab up all these things somehow since I imagine in doing so, time will magically find me that I can then spend on these games.  Despite Lollipop Chainsaw and Metal Gear Rising:  Revengeance likely being on the horizon.  (The former more than the latter)  Last year, the year filled with all sorts of games I played and loved and wanted to play and this and that, it's already looking sparse by this year's offerings and that isn't right.

Hopefully there'll be some sort of downtime this year rather than the constant stream of content that it seems like it is currently so I can actually clear through some of these games.  However, on the subject of time, there is something I did want to say about this post.  In keeping with the theme of time travel that Radiant Historia carries, I have decided this is as good a time as any to give a shot to this whole scheduling thing as I will likely be unable to reach a computer tonight.  As in, if you're reading this on the night of Saturday, February 11th, I didn't just write it because I wrote it now at just before 4 AM.  For some reason, I just think this is really cool, but I don't really want to fall back on it.  This is merely a test, if you will, so if I come back Sunday night to find that it didn't work, then I'll just be disappointed and not bother with it again.  However, if it goes up as planned, I'll be happy to have yet another reliable tool just in case something goes awry or I know something is going to go awry.  Regardless, time travel wooooooo!

LittleBigThings: Start Your Engines!

The above image, showing off Racing, one of the new styles of games you could make in LittleBigPlanet 2, might have been fore-telling something yet to come as LittleBigPlanet Karting is officially a thing, though details beyond that are scarce.  Literally, that's about all we know about it, as in we're not even sure on a developer just yet, but we're promised details of these things "soon", whenever that is.  This all follows some rumors that started towards the start of the week stating that LittleBigPlanet Karting was a thing and might even have some sort of Move integration, going so far as to having a Move Wheel peripheral mimicking that of the Wii Wheel used for Mario Kart.  I honestly don't like the idea of that, nor do I really have an idea of just how that would work (the Move Wand has a more organic, thus harder to mold, shape and the whole ball thing too), but I honestly wouldn't be surprised by it at this point.

You might be wondering, just as everybody else, "Why LBP?  Modnation Racers already exists!"  In fact, Chance wondered this exact thing and it is a really, really valid wonder to have.  I myself had it at first, but I had a little think about it, and I've got at least an idea of what could be the reason behind it all.  Just bear with me here for a moment.  The original Modnation Racers was made for PS3 as we all know, by a little studio called United Front Games who, as you might also know, has been a little busy lately.  Modnation Racers was initially something that a lot of people were looking forward to...until they got to play the Beta.  Gripes about controls instantly came out and even with some tweaking, the general opinion of the internet was a little unfavorable.  I'm sure it didn't set the sales charts on fire, despite all you could really do with it unfortunately, and the end result is that I don't think it's been seen as a 'franchise to look out for', like some of the other things the PS3 has that have started on the PS3 itself.

Then you have the PSP version that did even worse, mostly by virtue of it being a PSP game, which certainly didn't help the brand along at all.  That version and the up-coming Modnation Racers:  Road Trip for the Vita were done by SCE San Diego rather than United Front Games, so it just sort of reeks of "We already made this, might as well try and get it to sell." despite never really getting a lot of chatter.  Being that it's been a while since Modnation Racers came out, it's probably about time for a proper sequel to it, but the originators probably aren't too fussed at doing one and a sequel is likely a bit too much work for SCE San Diego who aren't really known for doing a whole lot aside from the criminally underrated Mark of Kri.  So if you can't do a sequel of a not-so-hot game, but still want to have another new racing game that has a broad appeal, what do you do?

Take the concept that worked (The Race, Create, Share philosophy that UFG put out there to mirror LBP's own Play, Create, Share), add it to a franchise that worked (LittleBigPlanet) and hope for success.  Everyone sort of looked at Modnation Racers as the "LittleBigPlanet" of kart-racing anyways, so why not make it official, yeah?  Sackboy already has a fairly broad appeal, as far as audiences go which is almost money in the bank right off, and the natural linking with making, tinkering with your own courses, racer and kart only makes it seem like more of a perfect fit.  Really, if it weren't for Road Trip coming out, Modnation Racers would probably be out of the general mindset already, so LittleBigPlanet Karting would be a little easier to accept.  LBP Karting even has Modnation Racers as an example case to look at; take the good, leave the bad.  As it stands, it just seems like the next step up if you sort of take apart all the ideas and look at them separately.

We'll see how it works out when the eventual reveal comes out, likely sooner rather than later.  I expect to see some footage of it by E3 and hopefully whoever's developing it (I doubt it's going to be Media Molecule, but we'll see) will be able to work something out with MM for some type of integration.  Figuring on the racers themselves being Sackboys and girls that you can customize, I'd hope we would be able to import our favorites from LBP 1 and 2 in to design karts around, rather than having to start from scratch - especially if they're planning on selling costumes for other Sony Franchises (as they did with Modnation and LBP both) to prevent having to double-dip for a Cole Sackboy racer.  (Which yes, Cole can't drive, blah blah, let me dream, okay?)  Here's hoping for at least a developer reveal in the coming week or so, since I'm pretty interested at face value.

Double News for Double Fine

If you've been paying to the internet in any capacity these last couple of days, chances are you've come across both stories I have.  Regardless, I'm going to elaborate on them in my own viewpoint because that's kinda what I do, and aside from this, about all I could do is write some more about Alpha Protocol which I'm not fully prepared to do just yet.  I want to get at least a little bit more through my new playthrough (Yes, I beat it -and- started a new game almost immediately) before I elaborate on how AP went from eh, to bad, to good, to great.  Anyway, Double Fine news, right, yes, right away on that.  We'll go with the earlier, less-publicized story first which is, by all rights, incredibly popular on its own.

Have you ever caught yourself saying, "Man, if only I were rich, I'd totally help make" and then fill in a sequel of your choosing to a game you quite obviously enjoyed?  I'm sure you have, as I'm sure we all have, really.  It's fairly normal, I should think, since even though we complain a lot about sequels, they all started as new IPs at some point, and obviously sequels are okay if they're of an IP we enjoy.  But how many of us would actually do it, or at least really volunteer that if it came down to it?  It's likely something the majority of us will never know for sure, but Indie Darling "Notch" of Minecraft fame, has at least offered to put his money where his mouth is for a sequel that he, as well as a good chunk of gamers out there, would absolutely love to see made:  Psychonauts 2.

Psychonauts is one of those games that, even if you haven't played it, you've heard of it.  And if it ever comes up in conversation that you haven't played it, people look at you cross.  Sometimes if even they themselves haven't played it either which results in everybody looking at everyone else weirdly.  It falls into the same archetype a lot of Double Fine games find themselves in; a fun, funny, imaginative story that draws you in and keeps you til the end even if the gameplay isn't up to snuff which, as implied, it generally isn't.  Regardless, Psychonauts stands out even more than usual and found its way into many a gaming heart back when it was released and years after, so to say that it's constantly at the forefront of the general gaming 'hive mind' sort of goes without saying really.

So when asked about a Psychonauts 2 possibility for no doubt the upteenth time, Tim Schafer said that he'd love to do it, and has even pitched it to plenty of people, but nobody's buying and nobody's funding.  With a couple million in the bank, they would be able to fund it, assuredly, and make it a thing that happens, but that money isn't just going to poof in from nowhere.  Yet with a single tweet, it seemed as if the money might just yet come from somewhere; from the jolly ol' Swede who managed to sell millions of copies of a game that wouldn't even be released for two years after people started buying it.  After hearing that 'all it would take' was funding, he sent off a tweet to Tim Schafer that said simply "Let's make Psychonauts 2 happen."  Chaos ensued and all while the Double Fine man himself slumbered away.

When he awoke to the aftermath of twitter madness that followed Notch's statement (and subsequent admission that he was serious to Rock Paper Shotgun), Schafer and Notch carried on in the public eye (which is not uncommon for either of them) for a while before quietly being ushered into private conversation by people with business sense, but no sense of fun.  The official word that came from it was no word at all really.  "Tim and Markus are talking" which we all knew, became the word and shortly after that the word became, "If this does pan out, don't expect an announcement right away, of course" because, you know.  Even with more money than is necessary, these things take time.  Though Schafer did have another unrelated game announcement which leads directly into the next story quite well.

Tim Schafer went on to say later that he wanted to really get back to the basics, back to his roots which, as we all know, means adventure games since that's pretty much where Schafer started out.  Rather than try to travel about from publisher to publisher asking for funds with this one, Schafer decided to try a different tact; one not wholly originally, but not exactly on the magnitude as it was projected to be and assuredly not on the magnitude it's ended up at.  To make a classic point-and-click adventure game, all Schafer asked for was a mere $400,000 from the collective of the internet through Kickstarter which does this stuff on a fairly regular basis.  The premise is simple (and in fact, has somewhat been covered before in this blog) - a person or a company (usually small) sets up a page that presents exactly what they want to do, a pricetag that they need to do it, a break-down of where that money is going, and rewards for anyone who wants to contribute certain amounts (or above).  A deadline for that cost is set and if, and only if, they've raised enough money to meet or surpass their cost, they get that money to then go on and put towards doing what they want to do.

The deadline that Double Fine set was an entirely reasonable one of March 13th, giving just over a month to raise the money, indicating that they hoped to start development rather soon.  They went on to make their deadline in eight hours.  Eight hours is all it took for the internet as a whole to throw $400,000 at Double Fine in hopes that they would do what they do best in simply making a game.  If breaking one record wasn't enough by being the fastest funded Kickstarter project ever, well, the internet was happy to push itself into breaking yet another one.  In less than 24 hours, the Double Fine project managed to get One Million Dollars in funding and hasn't even stopped yet. 

As of this writing, the project is up to $1,143,713 with 32 more days to go, though I imagine funding will drop off in the next couple days.  Maybe.  While Double Fine has promised to funnel any 'extra money' back into the game they make through all sorts of means, one of which is porting it to non-PC platforms (considering they're imagining utilizing touch-based technology, I'm sure you all know what I'm hoping for) I'm not sure just what they can realistically expect to do.  As it is, the project is $743,713 (which is an ever-shifting number) overfunded, so unless they're planning on hiring only A-List Voice Actors in something of a show of opulence they've been afforded, I imagine it's going to take some doing to figure out what to do with all that money.

Truly a position to be envied.  But it's well-deserved and even though I haven't played many of Double Fine's offerings (nor have I uniformly enjoyed the ones I've played), I like Double Fine.  How could you -not-?  So here's hoping to only the best for them, though they're not going to need a whole lot of hope.  Money bags, yes, but not hope.