Entertainment Electronics Blog

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.

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.

Remember back when it was still uncertain whether Valkyria Chronicles would ever get a sequel? Such times of doubt seem quaint now, as not only is the release of Valkyria Chronicles 2 (pictured above) right around the corner for North America, but it now appears Sega may even be readying a third entry for the series.

As Andriasang reports, the website “Valkyria3.jp” exists, and yes, it’s owned by Sega. And it was evidently registered by Sega on May 31 of this year, so it’s still rather fresh — although currently whatever it has to show (if anything at all) is protected with a user name and password.

So while there is the possibility that Sega is merely securing the website to protect their intellectual property, there’s also still the possibility that, yes, Sega may actually be planning a second sequel for the franchise. After all, while Valkyria Chronicles 2 is only just about to be release in North America on August 31, the game has been out in Japan since January.

While the first Valkyria Chronicles was a PlayStation 3 exclusive, Valkyria Chronicles 2 shifted over to Sony’s handheld to become a PSP exclusive. Could a third entry head back to consoles? Possibly, but it’s probably best to wait for confirmation that a third entry actually exists before jumping ahead to that that level of speculation.

After EA explored packing in bonus content in a plan nicknamed Project Ten Dollar, several other publishers followed suit. THQ got in on the act recently by announcing a single-use code for online play packaged in new copies of WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2011. This may sound similar to EA’s Online Pass, but one THQ executive is a bit more candid with his reasoning.

“I don’t think we really care whether used game buyers are upset because new game buyers get everything,” said wrestling games creative director Cory Ledesma in an interview with CVG. “So if used game buyers are upset that they don’t get the online feature set I don’t really have much sympathy for them.

“That’s a little blunt but we hope it doesn’t disappoint people. We hope people understand that when the game’s bought used we get cheated. I don’t think anyone wants that, so in order for us to make strong, high-quality WWE games we need loyal fans that are interested in purchasing the game. We want to award those fans with additional content.”

EA’s Online Pass and this online code from THQ have faced criticism for locking away features that used to be included on the disc. The THQ code supplements its online play feature with access to the game’s first DLC pack, which includes Chris Masters, and Halloween costumes for Rey Mysterio and Kelly Kelly.

The open-world game of gambling and debauchery This is Vegas has been canceled, reports CVG. The story cites sources close to the project, claiming that Warner Bros. has officially called off development. WB picked it up when bought Midway’s assets in June, but then closed developer Surreal Software and placed its work force in other studios.

Of course, it wouldn’t be Vegas without massive losses. The source also claims that Midway had spent about $43 million on the game when it was sold to WB. Then, WB committed another $250,000 per month until it was canceled. In total, the game probably went through $50 million without ever seeing the light of day.

“It’s a ridiculous waste of money,” said the source. “A silly budget when you think that games like Konami’s Saw – which made a profit – were built with around $3m and BlackLight Tango Down was made for $2.5m.” If you’re curious of what might have been, take a look at our 2008 E3 preview.

Looks like it won’t be hard to obtain a copy of Red Faction: Battlegrounds, the downloadable companion to the upcoming Red Faction: Armageddon.

A THQ representative told Joystiq at GamesCom that Battlegrounds may end up being a pre-order bonus for Armageddon.

“No price yet,” the representative said. “They are talking about possible pre-order specials. It’s possible, hasn’t been finalized yet, that if you pre-order Armageddon you may be able to toss this in as well. They obviously want to keep it as low as possible.”

Making Battlegrounds a pre-order bonus wouldn’t be out of character for THQ, which previously offered a free copy of Red Faction: Guerilla with Darksiders. Barring that, THQ expects it to sell it for between $5 and $10.

Red Faction Armageddon is due early 2011.

While Fallout: New Vegas is pretty much done (at the moment, the development team at Obsidian is focused purely on bugfixing, since all the content is complete), some recent news has come out about its definitive ending. Much like the original version of Fallout 3 (pre-Broken Steel DLC), New Vegas simply ends — the player won’t be able to go on to play the game some more after the ending. Destructoid has heard one reason from New Vegas senior producer Jason Bergman, and we got an additional explanation from project director Josh Sawyer reproduced below:

“We put a lot of effort into the ending slides — we know those slides are really popular with people so we want to make sure there’s a huge amount of variety and reactivity with that stuff. We weren’t really focused on new features so much as to add a really rich sense of reactivity to the players and the choices they make.”

We want to make it a definitive ending. Initially, we talked about trying to support post-game play, but because the changes that can happen at the end of the game are pretty major, this is what it basically came down to: either have the changes feel really major in the end slides and then have them not be very major after the end of the game, or make them really minor and not that impactful. And we feel it’s better to say, ‘you know what, we’re just going to end the game, and the changes you made can be minor or really really big, but because we can’t script all the changes to the Wasteland to let you keep playing, we’re just going to stop it there.’ But we do let the player know when that’s about to happen– a sort of, ‘the end of the game is coming, so we’re saving your game right now, so if you want to keep your game going, you can, otherwise, it’s about to be over.’”

Whether you decide to try to finish every quest in the game before the end, or simply end the game and go look for additional quest in new playthroughs, you’re probably going to be busy. Sawyer noted, “We have a huge number of quests in this game. We’ve often said this is the same physical size as Fallout 3, which is true, but the amount of quest content is crazy.”

5th Cell hasn’t yet revealed the project that will follow Super Scribblenauts, but they have dropped one tantalizing tidbit.

“We’re not ready to reveal our next original game just yet, but I can say we’re using the Source Engine for it,” 5th Cell CEO Jeremiah Slaczka told Joystiq.

Slaczka wouldn’t say whether the engine will be used in the company’s unannounced XBLA project. No matter which platform the game it appears on though, 5th Cell could make good use of the Source Engine’s physics capabilities. The studio’s penchant for creative design brings to mind games like Garry’s Mod.

Super Scribblenauts will be out October 12. We’ll likely find out more after that.

Today’s E3 Sony press conference made good on yesterday’s promise of more information on Dead Space 2. After finishing yesterday’s cliffhanger ending (with another cliffhanger), Sony announced that the PlayStation 3 would be getting an exclusive Limited Edition. The package will include the game itself, plus a port of the Wii title Dead Space Extraction with Move support.

The original Dead Space sold slightly better on the Xbox 360, but this kind of exclusive limited edition gave Dante’s Inferno (also from EA) an edge on the sales charts. We might see the same thing happening with Isaac Clarke’s next horror adventure as well.

The title of World of Warcraft killer has been bestowed on a number of MMORPGs, Star Wars: The Old Republic among them. TOR certainly has a good shot of making a significant impact in the MMO space between the Star Wars license and BioWare being the developer behind it. A select few gamers may have an opportunity to play the game this weekend if a thread on the game’s official forums (via Massively, VG247) is to be believed.

According to the thread, a closed beta with a strict non-disclosure agreement is being held from today, June 25, through Sunday, June 27. A subsequent post claimed that only 100-200 invites would be going out, though that claim — and indeed, the existence of the beta itself — can’t be verified at this time. But the forum thread has already reached 226 pages and had to be split into a second thread by a moderator. Meanwhile, not a single denial from BioWare has been made, suggesting that the beta will be taking place as reported.

If it does, it’s entirely possible that some information about the game will leak from one of the testers despite the NDA. Should that happen, we’ll be hearing more about TOR very soon.