For those of you wondering if Resident Evil 5 will be ported to the Wii like Resident Evil 4 was then you may be sadly disappointed. In an interview with Kotaku Resident Evil 5 producer Jun Takeuchi said that that “With the difference between hardware specs for the Wii and the PS3, porting might be hard”. He went on to say that they currently have “no plans” to release a Wii port of the game. However, Takeuchi did express a desire to bring the Resident Evil games to a larger franchise

“I think, while Resident Evil 4 is a great game, its appeal was limited somewhat to maniac players,” Takeuchi said. “With RE5, I wanted to bring the series to a larger audience. I think its important to do the same for the next RE.” - Source

The Wii Resident Evil titles – such as The Darkside Chronicles – are part of this plan, making games that are fit for the Wii’s technical capabilities and not creating a game that is a bad port from a technically superior console. I’ve always thought that porting games to the Wii from Xbox 360 or PS3 is a bad idea, and games like Dead Rising proves my point. It can work though, the recent Ghosbusters game being a good example, but it’s usually better if it doesn’t try to emulate something that the Wii just can’t do.

Capcom is yet to decide on a producer for Resident Evil 6.

A survey emailed to current and past Planetside subscribes has indicated that Sony is planning “to expand the Planetside universe with another game”. It has also been discovered that SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) registered Planetside2.com on September 21st.

“We plan to expand the PlanetSide® universe with another game and we need your help with the design. After all, who knows the game better than you, our customers, the people who actually play it! Don’t worry about the original PlanetSide, it isn’t going anywhere.

We want to hear your opinion and to do so we have put together a short survey. The information you provide will play a critical role into helping guide the development and direction of the next hit Massively Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter.” - Source

Planetside Universe, a Planetside fan site, contacted John Smedley, the CEO of SOE, who had this to say;

“PlanetSide fans will be happy We have big things planned in the next 12 months. We’re working on something new that’s really cool.” - Source

Planetside was never the most popular MMO (at its peak it was estimated to have around 75,000 players) but it had some great ideas, which led to some truly epic moments (some of the player stories that came out of the game are amazing). Now only a few thousand hardcrore fans remain and you’d be lucky to see the massive battles that the game experienced during its prime. If a new game can successfully fix its predecessors problems then I’m all for it, just like the guys over at Rock, Paper Shotgun.

Goldeneye may have a special place in the hearts of millions of gamers, and it may also consistently place high in ‘Top X Games of All Time’ lists, but it’s looking increasingly unlikely that a port to Xbox Live Arcade or Wii’s Virtual Arcade will ever happen. This isn’t the first time we’ve heard such rumours, but Rare – developer of the classic FPS – has seemingly given up on the port ever seeing the light of day.

In response to a readers question in a recent Rare Scribes update the developer all but signed the execution warrant on a port of the game;

“That was some time ago, my friend. Fate was against us that day. Destiny conspired to raise the hurdles even as we attempted to clear them, resulting in unpleasant groinal injury. I suspect we’re long past the stage where an agreement was on the cards, but you never know. Stranger things have happened… somewhere… probably.” - Source

The blame lies at the feet of Microsoft and Nintendo, who are apparently unable to reach an agreement on the financial terms of such a release. It all comes down to licensing laws, with Microsoft now owning Rare but Activision ultimately owning the rights to produce games in the James Bond franchise. However, Activision places the blame in Nintendo’s court, which published the game on its original N64 release. Whatever the case it seems that gamers won’t get a port until the money side of things is sorted out and it doesn’t look like that will be happening anytime soon.

I never actually owned an N64 myself, but a friend use to bring his round to my house and we used to have hours of fun playing four player split-screen. Most of the time we got trounced by my friend, but he pretty much always played as Odd Job so I still, to this day, say he had the advantage. The graphics may not be anywhere near today’s standards, but I’d still relish the opportunity to play the game through my Xbox 360; largely because there are so few split-screen games out there today and nothing can beat having three friends playing in the same room as you.

Fear not though, as Perfect Dark – which in some ways had a more enjoyable multiplayer than Goldeneye – will be coming to Xbox Live Arcade this winter, which is at least some consolation.

It looks like the Left 4 Dead 2 boycott movement I wrote about back in June has been dealt a major blow as two of the founders recently published a post that raised more than just a few eyebrows. In an attempt to show the boycott group that Left 4 Dead 2 maintains the same quality that made the first game such a joy to play Valve flew the two group members out to their offices in Washington, which at least gives them a chance to say they’ve played the game before they continue to ‘boycott’ it.

So, what was their verdict?

“As for L4D2, things seemed balanced and ‘tight’ and did not feel like a rushed job. While we were visiting their offices we personally witnessed what can only be called a small army of artists, coders, mappers hard at work, which explains the rapid transformations in artwork that we’ve all seen.

What we can say with confidence is that the quality of gameplay in Left 4 Dead 2 is not in question; and it will only get better (from what we understand, almost daily testing of game builds by most of the staff at Valve).” - Source

266 comments later (at the time of writing) and they had been predictably labeled as ‘sell-outs’ by the majority of the group, even after the two guys were adamant that Valve isn’t dropping support for the first game. I suppose it’s hard to trust the word of two guys who’d just had an all-expenses paid trip across the US, even if they did help create the group. However, I had already made up my mind long before this new development.

So, what do you think? Sell-outs? Simply appreciating a good game? Don’t care? I think that I regret the comments I made in my previous post on this issue. After reading updated previews and seeing new videos since that post I believe that Left 4 Dead 2 will be worth it if you enjoyed the first game, and I am now genuinely looking forward to it. If Valve continues to support the first game then you’ve got two great games in your hands, and what could really be wrong with that apart from finding the time to play them both? I also need to note that I never agreed with a ‘boycott’ in the first place; I was simply a little annoyed because I thought that Valve would only be releasing a tiny bit of content for the first game, but from seeing more of the sequel I’m not sure that I’m even bothered about playing the first game anymore (to be fair I have enjoyed the content we did get). I probably won’t buy the game full price, but that’s because I have more than enough games to keep me occupied at the moment and it’s always good to pick up a bargain somewhere down the line.

I suppose the most important question here is “What the hell is that on Gabe’s shirt???”.

Related posts:

• Valve Responds to Left 4 Dead 2 Boycott

If you were planning on using your all-powerful Shepard from Mass Effect to take out those dirty aliens then you’re out of luck. Bioware has stated that the abilities and statistics you earned in the first game won’t carry over to Mass Effect 2, at least in an obvious fashion anyway. Instead the game will explain why Shepard has lost his level 60 and ultimate badass Renegade status, but hopefully that won’t mean the cliché’ of amnesia.

“It’s something we can’t go into detail about for obvious reasons, but it actually happens the other way around. Our goal with the story, in terms of getting the game started quickly and players into really compelling story situations… that dictated and allowed us to do certain things including changing the way that your abilities work and the way you develop your character.” - Computerworld

The reason behind the loss of your hard work – development wise - is that the retooling of the game’s core systems would make using the abilities from the previous game impossible. Of course, that’s totally understandable as plenty of new games in a franchise tend to use completely new or updated engines where things from the previous game just wouldn’t work without series headaches on the development team’s behalf. In this case Casey Hudson, Mass Effect 2’s lead designer, explains that “literally every system” in the game – which includes the inventory, guns, abilities, etc. – have been improved, making the transfer of systems from the last game impossible.

However, he did go on to stress that “all those things have been dramatically improved” and that “we’re taking into account all of your accomplishments in terms of building a character from the first game”. He then added; “So things you’d expect to be acknowledged, like if you were a level 60 character, or you were highly Renegade and don’t want to start out at the middle again”. Importing your characters game save from Mass Effect will be “acknowledged in ways that map across to the new system” so you will ultimately feel that “you are continuing as that character”.

This makes complete sense, as you can hardly expect to have a fully levelled up character from the get go as it would defeat the object of Mass Effect 2 which, let’s not forget, is rooted in the RPG genre. You also have to respect that new players may be joining in on the franchise, even if it is a little odd why you’d want to play game that continues a story you know nothing about. In the end all I wanted was for Mass Effect 2 to acknowledge some of the decisions I made in the previous game, just so it didn’t break the flow of the story with something that would seem completely out of character for the Shepard I had created.

Mass Effect 2 is set for release sometime between January and March 2010.

Mass Effect 2’s producer talks about the game - Computerworld (Via 1UP)

Back at E3 2009 Microsoft announced that Facebook and Twitter would be integrated into the Xbox 360 dashboard. Speaking with Eurogamer Microsoft’s James Halton revealed that both services are due sometime this autumn, but didn’t give an exact release date. However, apparently they will arrive “before Christmas”.

Now, you may wonder why they’re not part of the dashboard update coming later next month (currently being trialled by a selection of Xbox Live users). The reason is that both will be separate applications so will launch separately, much like when a game is released on Xbox Live Arcade. In that way they want be that intrusive if you don’t want to use the services.

Personally I’m tired of people saying “What’s the point? We can do this on our PC”. You can also play games on your PC, but that doesn’t mean you always want to. It’s just another way of updating your Facebook/Twitter when you’re not at your PC and I’m all for that. I’m not sure my friends on both sites will want to know what game I’m currently playing, but it’s still a cool feature nonetheless. Although, do separate applications mean we won’t be able to update our Facebook/Twitter from inside the game? Even if it’s updated automatically? It doesn’t sound nearly half as good if that’s the case.

There’s no word on the Last.fm or Sky integration yet, but hopefully they won’t take too long to arrive.

In other news the DSi now has Facebook intergration (also announced at E3), but it’s Japan only for the moment.