Final Fantasy VII Remake? - Of Course

So, Speaking at Gamescom last week, Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIII producer Yoshinori Kitase refused to deny the possibility of them revisiting the game:
Well there's a big, smack in the mouth givaway if ever I heard one!
Of course there’s gonna be a remake, and it will be on all platforms, even mobile phones. For God’s sake lets get a grip girls.
We’ve all ben round this block a few times already.
“Contrived Groundswell” is a phrase that springs to mind, long term marketing strategy to generate as broad an interest as possible.
look at it this way. If they announced now it would be newsworthy only amongst us gamers. We’d go giddy and start off gigabytes of hype and debate.
But let it brew for a year, with “leaks”, rumours, the odd image here and there, “accidental” reveal in interviews and the bigger news channels will eventually pick up on this ‘phenomenon’.
Then the big announcement at TGS or E3. And Bob’s yer uncle.

Heavy Rain

Any Sleuths at GC09 would have picked up that Heavy Rain, from those nice people that brought us Fahrenheit, has a 2000 page script, compared to the average game that has around 95 - 125 pages.
But remember the story of Heavy Rain provides the option of choosing to figure out who the Origami Killer, by taking on any one of four playable characters and switching between them.

But if we have four characters to switch between and with each we choose one of a selected range of paths to take, the actual number of pages we encounter diminishes.

Sure if it was one character interacting with n+1 npc’s with a fairly linear story with a small range of possible branches it would be 100% of the pages having to be available along a gamer controlled narrative pathtime.

But this same gamer pathtime will only experience 25% of the full potential route potentially available from the 4 characters of Heavy Rain. this brings the actual number of pages available experienced down to 500.
Then factor in the actual path chosen by the player from those available and the number drops into the average range.

And average can vary between the fixed script of games like Resistance 2 and COD through to Games like Mass effect and Fallout.

Ideally I’d like each member of my family to play as one character through the game – but that would have to include the dog to make up the numbers. then we could watch the whole story unfold.

I don;t suppose there is any hope of online multiplayer / singstar style crossover so we can see what happens to the other characters.
Or is there going to be a special edition with movie game play of the four stories.

To be honest I gave up with Fahrenheit. all that endless button selection started to get on my nerve.

Fireburst om the Horizon

Developers exDream, based in in Hannover, Germany are working on a game that dishes out some heavy duty racing and road-rage conflict letting you ignite a rival’s car or even dose your own set of wheels in “protective flames”. Bring it on I say.

Other than yer standard racers, buggies and monster trucks, exDreams racer will let you match drivers with wheels. I'm imagining , Clarksons rapist abusive obese truck drivers!!

This would fit nicely with over 50 taunts on offer. But this is no free badmouthing and chances are someone will pwn you for your profanities

Fireburst looks like it could be a pretty good game. Almost like a cross between the powerups and weapons of Wipeout and Motorstorm.
I'll definitely keep an eye on this one. Motorstorm 2 was not that different from number one so it's good to have a different racer hit the streets. If Fireburst allows us to play our music (a la Zen Pinball) then we are onto a sure fire winner.
Here's a cut and paste from those geniuses at cinemablend.com where you can read a proper article not like this scrabble of words I knock out occasionally.

FireBurst Features:

• First PLAYSTATION 3 title from Black Inc.
• Innovative boost system: With the novel 4-stage fire boost, opponents' vehicles are eliminated in spectacular ways
• Fireburst is developed based on Unreal Engine 3
• Wacky characters
• All kinds of vehicles: From sleek buggies and pimped-up vintage models to massive pick-ups, this fleet leaves nothing to be desired
• Unique combinations of drivers and vehicles: Match a character with the appropriate vehicle to optimize driving attributes
• Game modes offering plenty of variation: Challenge and championship modes, as well as multiplayer options (with up to 16 players online, or up to 4 players offline with a split screen), make for spectacular entertainment
• Surprising twists: 20 huge tracks are divided into ten areas. Each track offers shortcuts and alternative routes
• Plenty of bonuses: Unlock new vehicles, tracks, and game modes
• Sneering and jeering: Each character uses more than 50 different taunts to mock the competition. But beware: The more you provoke the AI drivers, the more aggressively they will race you!

Demon's Soul. Don;t waste your vote!

Those nice people over at Atlus.com have kindly forewarned us hardcore gamers to to prepare for the arrival of Demon's Souls. (the pic is from their site too, a thousand thanks to them)

King Allant the XII, the last king of Boletaria, searched tirelessly to expand his might. The Nexus, a great ice shrine nestled in the mountains, bestowed the power of the souls onto him, bringing prosperity to his kingdom. Still unsated, he returned again to the Nexus, where he foolishly awakened the Old One from its eternal slumber. This long forgotten evil, now wrought upon Boletaria, plunged the realm into darkness and fog. A mighty demon horde poured into the kingdom, devouring the souls of men.

Champions from other realms learned of Boletaria's fate and sought to deliver the kingdom from evil; none would return from the cursed land. Called upon by a mysterious maiden in black, you go forth, the last hope for humanity in a place lost to demons and darkness...

The Nexus, isn't that what Kirk and Picard went off to sort out in Star Trek Generations?
Anyway, so King Allant XII the unsatiated lets loose the rentahorde upon his Kingdom eh?
Well that's what you get for not living in a democracy.
These hordes have been quite busy these last few years, is there a horde labour shortage.
Shouldn't they form a union or something?

Guinea pigs of Xi No More!!

Having messed about with Xi for longer than I would have liked I got to wondering about the point of it all.
Of course its about Sony Testing out the capability of using Home as a tool for corporate collaboration on different projects. Product design, system development etc. I can see software developers using the tools we messed about with in home to share and co-operate in game development.
Link this to the comment I made earlier about the secret teamsters in the dungeons of naughty dog sharing code. Imagine developers actually sharing across a private zone in Home.
Forget about emailing files and VPN, it's all in a virtual developer studio and server in Home.

And it's not restricted to Sony. Any company can do the same with their product, be it shoe design, machinery, molecular biology or software development.

The Secret Edge

So Naughty Dog has somewhere in its building a team of developers to work as a creative hub and share best pratice with other PS3 Game developers
It is called Edge Tools, and the development team that is working on it is called The Ice Team.

It makes perfect sense. Everyone benefits developers and gamers both.
Breaking down the isolation of individual creative groups makes for a phenomenal increase in both the quality and pace of innovative development

Read more: http://www.ps3attitude.com/new/2009/06/sonys-secret-super-development-team/#comment-3624#ixzz0Hl94VOSc&C

PS3 Motion sensor

This is quite a leap forward.
Let's hope they add this functionality to Final Fantasy XIV
PS3 Motion Sensor