Entertainment Electronics Blog

Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep is set for release on PSP in the U.S. on September 7, but not on the PSP Go. Square Enix has confirmed the game will only receive a UMD release, meaning owners of the digital distribution-based Go won’t have any way to play it.

The confirmation came first by blogger and Arizona Daily Star writer Phil Villarreal, who contacted PR firm Ogilvy, which handles Square Enix releases. “Just found out that there unfortunately are no plans to release KHBBS on PSP Go. If that changes, I will certainly let you know!” a representative told him. Kotaku later contacted Square Enix for first-hand confirmation, and were also told there are “currently no plans” for a PSP Go release.

Besides a delay before the PSP version of Little Big Planet was released digitally, there hasn’t been a high profile game that wasn’t released both on UMD and through digital distribution since the Go came out last year, so Birth by Sleep will be the first spurn Go owners. For the sake of those Go owners, let’s hope this isn’t the beginning of a new trend.

It wouldn’t exactly be Marvel vs. Capcom 3 or Street Fighter X Tekken, but the thought of an epic adventure game crossover starring Penny Arcade, Sam & Max, Strong Bad, and — inexplicably — the cast of Team Fortress 2 would be a dream come true for many. And even though a short clip on the latest episode of GameTrailers TV seems to be teasing exactly that, the odds are greater we’ll have to keep dreaming.

In fact, being able to calculate odds may be exactly what you’ll need for the game Telltale is teasing, as it’s likely to be a sequel to their Texas Hold ‘Em game released way back in 2005. But let’s back up for a sec — as you can see for yourself in the teaser clip, it shows four silhouettes looking unmistakably like Penny Arcade’s Tycho, Sam from Sam & Max, the Heavy from Team Fortress 2, and Strong Bad from, well, Strong Bad. “Bet you never thought these guys would get together,” a title card reads. “Fine out how 9.2.2010.”

If you look closely at the silhouettes, though, you can see they’re all holding something in their hands…something that kind of looks like a fanned-out hand of cards. So will these characters simply be playable avatars in a new poker game from Telltale? That sure seems to be the most likely explanation, but we’ll have to wait until September 2 — the day before the Penny Arcade Expo kicks off — to find out for sure.

Half-Life is one of the most popular franchises in videogames, so why hasn’t the world seen it adapted into a movie yet? According to Valve CEO and co-founder Gabe Newell, it’s because they don’t trust anyone to do it but themselves.

Speaking to PC Gamer, Newell revealed that they’ve actually gotten tons of studio offers in the past. “There was a whole bunch of meetings with people from Hollywood [after Half-Life 1 shipped],” Newell explained. “Directors down there wanted to make a Half-Life movie and stuff, so they’d bring in a writer or some talent agency would bring in writers, and they would pitch us on their story. And their stories were just so bad. I mean, brutally, the worst. Not understanding what made the game a good game, or what made the property an interesting thing for people to be a fan of.”

And that, Newell said, is when they decided only one company could get it right: Valve. “That’s when we started saying: ‘Wow, the best thing we could ever do is to just not do this as a movie, or we’d have to make it ourselves,’” he said. “And I was like, ‘Make it ourselves? Well that’s impossible.’ But the Team Fortress 2 thing, the Meet the Team shorts, is us trying to explore that.”

Those “Meet the Team” videos were certainly a big hit with gamers, so the thought that they could potentially be a small-scale test for a potentially bigger feature-length movie is definitely exciting.

Sega advertised the next hi-def version of the Yakuza series in the first few pages of this week’s edition of Japan’s leading game magazine, Famitsu.

The advertisement depicts a destroyed and ruined entrance to Kamura-Cho, stand-in for real life Tokyo red light district Kabuki-Cho, and setting for at least five of the series’ previous six games (including the upcoming PSP Yakuza: Black Panther, which will be released in Japan on September 22.) A caption that reads “The End” sprawls across the ad’s two pages. Wrecked cars are strewn amongst fallen signs for massage parlors, gambling establishments and Korean barbecue restaurants. The ad seems to imply that Yakuza 5 will take place in the aftermath of some disaster that leaves Tokyo in shambles (we’re guessing an earthquake, but the ad doesn’t reveal the source of the destruction.)

The ad gives no gameplay, platform or release date information, but it’s likely that more will be revealed at Tokyo Game Show next month, and that the game will be a PlayStation exclusive like the previous titles in the series. The Yakuza series has traditionally used Japan’s yearly trade show as a coming out party of sorts. Yakuza 3 and 4 received widespread acclaim at their TGS showings in 2008 and 2009 respectively.

If there’s anything that can make a Kingdom Hearts game seem less twee, it’s almost certainly Cloud Strife. His return to the Square-Disney crossover-fest doesn’t just involve his smug one-winged self, either — he’s also carting along his battle system, so to speak.

When you reach the Olympic Colosseum section of upcoming DS release Kingdom Hearts Re:coded, you’ll have a chance to work alongside Hercules and find a way to deal with all the “bug blocks” bouncing around the world. Cloud is paying a visit to the Colosseum himself, trying to settle things once and for all with a certain rival, and Hades is once again taking advantage of lust for revenge.

As a result of his presence (?), battles in the Colosseum use a classic, Final Fantasy-ish Active Time Battle system, with Sora and gang on the right and a gaggle of enemies on the left. Hercules and Cloud (who eventually joins you, of course) each have a set of special moves, and there’s also an action component to it, with quick button presses required in order to block enemy attacks.

Re:coded is due out October 7 for the Nintendo DS in Japan and presumably sometime thereafter in the States. It turns out that each individual area of Re:coded has its own way of having Sora fight, so we ain’t seen nothing yet, perhaps.

After a fairly hefty wait, Metroid: Other M is finally hitting Wii shelves next week. The new issue of Famitsu magazine in Japan has the first review, and by and large it’s pretty complimentary — Nintendo and Tecmo’s collaborative effort got three 9’s and one 8 for a total of 35 points.

The sheer variety of moves available to Samus in Other M received adulation from nearly every one of Famitsu’s reviewers. “The Sense Move lets you move quickly and easily dodge attacks, which make the controls feel really good,” one said. “You occasionally lose track of where you’re going next, but that in itself is very Metroid-like. Switching to first-person by holding the remote vertically also works surprisingly well.” “There’s a wide variety of moves available, but Sense Move is by far the best,” another added. “It allows even casual gamers to enjoy the battles well enough.”

“It’s impressive how many moves are at your disposal, especially considering the lack of buttons,” a third editor wrote. “Switching to first-person instantly takes some getting used to, but you can use it in both exploration and combat and it gives the game a very fun Metroid-like vibe.”

The writers also had praise for Other M’s exploring and fighting aspects. “Every map has tons of stuff to interact with, and some of the puzzles can be hard to solve,” one said, “but the feeling you get when working them out is something else. The bosses work the same way; they all require some sort of trick to defeat.”

The chief complaints the reviewers had with the new Metroid all had to do with the difficulty. “The game’s tough, making you wish for a difficulty selector at times,” one writer said, “but the high-tempo action and dramatic story are enough to keep you enthralled.” Another brought up “the way minion-level enemies respawn” as “debatably annoying.”

Other M officially comes out August 31 in the States.

The allegations of racial insensitivity that surrounded an early trailer for Resident Evil 5 have brought deep changes in the way Capcom’s creative process works, according to senior PR manager Melody Pfeiffer. Speaking to Gamasutra, Pfeiffer said that Capcom’s U.S. staff is now more involved in the creative process to help assure better understanding of potentially offensive content to other cultures.

The Resident Evil 5 controversy began when Capcom showed a trailer for the game at E3 2007. Despite the fact that Capcom would eventually reveal that Resident Evil 5 featured an African partner and white American villains, that early trailer showed nothing but black zombies attacking — and being shot over and over and over again by — a white protagonist. It was highly charged imagery that led to allegations of racial insensitivity.

“Since the RE5 controversy, we have become much more aware of how important it is that we are part of the asset creation process early on so that we are able to have a say in the end product,” Pfeiffer said to Gamasutra. “We are also designing a lot of our own assets from this side of the pond so that we are able to make strategic pieces of content that make sense for our market. We are working really closely with our producers in Japan to construct these materials for the West and they are open more then ever to hearing our thoughts and ideas for assets.”

As Resident Evil 5 producer Jun Takeuchi said at the time, the team was indeed taken by surprise by the controversy, with Takeuchi saying there was “a misunderstanding about the initial trailer.”

Irrational Games boss and BioShock creator Ken Levine may have left BioShock 2 to 2K Marin, but he hasn’t ruled out a return to Rapture himself in the future — so long as he has a good enough idea.

“Leaving Rapture was very, very personally difficult for me,” Levine explained to CVG during GamesCom last week. “It was my whole life. I don’t have kids, it’s like my child. I feel that connection to Andrew Ryan, Sander Cohen — a sick group of people to feel a connection to but I do. I just felt that we had said all we needed to say about it… at the time. I mean, never say never. But right now that’s how we feel about it.”

So if it’s “never say never,” what would it take for Levine to make a return to Rapture? “Yeah. I mean, life’s a long time. But I’d HAVE to have an idea that drove that. I’d have to spring from the idea,” he said. But for now, Levine is focused on the cloud city of Columbia in BioShock Infinite, which features its own bizarre cast of characters — including the Big Daddy-like creature seen in the debut trailer with its heart visible through a glass case. As explained on Irrational’s latest podcast (via VG247), this character is called “Handyman,” and it went through quite an evolution to its current state.

“I think with the original Handyman, there were claws,” said concept artist Rob Waters. “But in the end, Crabman didn’t end up working out because he couldn’t grab a guy and shove him in a fish tank very gracefully, and he ended up looking a little goofy in-game” (early concept art for this version hasn’t been released, but we’re guessing he looked something like this). In the end, they replaced the claws with large porcelain hands because they decided it’d be more “fundamentally scary,” and add “humanity” to the character.

BioShock Infinite is planned for release in 2012. You can check out our early impressions of the game here.

With a name like Final Fantasy Versus XIII, you might expect the second game in the Fabula Nova Crystallis trilogy to release near FFXIII. But after long waits between any new information and reports of “difficulties,” it seemed unlikely.

Now producer Yoshinori Kitase has made comments that seem to confirm a long wait for Versus XIII, or at least cast doubt on a concrete timeline. Speaking to GamingUnion, Kitase said, “We have no release date information to update. Unfortunately, we can’t say anything about that. We can’t commit ourselves to 2011 either.”

To be clear, this doesn’t mean Versus XIII won’t release in 2011, but it does mean that the game isn’t yet close enough to finished to call a 2011 release a certainty. Most likely, if we see the game in 2011 at all, it will be near the end of the year.

BioWare has announced the “dramatic conclusion” to the Dragon Age Origins storyline with the final DLC episode, which is due to arrive the same day as the Mass Effect 2 DLC “Lair of the Shadow Broker.”

Titled “Witch Hunt,” the new DLC picks up where the original game left off by featuring the return of Morrigan. It will answer a number of pressing questions from the original game, likely paving the way for Dragon Age II.

Witch Hunt will include “powerful rewards” that can be transferred into Origins and Awakening, as well as the ability to create a new, high-level Warden.

The DLC episode will cost $7.00. Look for it on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC on September 7.