I suppose being the first person in the world to play Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception is a good reason to become a talk-show host. It beats having to regurgitate those hackneyed jokes over and over.
News Blips:
Uncharted 3 gameplay premieres on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The titular host was shown the game by Naughty Dog co-presidents Evan Wells and Christophe Balestra. Instead of the magnificent desert visas depicted in the VGA debut trailer, the demo showcased an escape from a burning chateau. As the video shows, protagonist Nathan Drake and his longtime mentor, Victor "Sully" Sullivan, attempt to avoid getting scorched while defeating enemies with guns and hand-to-hand moves. Scripted sequences — a mainstay of the franchise — appear in the demo as well, including one breathtaking moment where Drake dangles from a stair banister over a pit of fiery death. Of course, things take a different turn when Fallon gets the controls handed to him, and well…just see it for yourself.
Alan Pritchard, Sega's executive vice president of sales and marketing, confirms the creation of a Dreamcast game collection title. In an interview with Game Informer, Pritchard didn't disclose the specific titles included on the disk, but he did talk about Sega's plans. "The Dreamcast fans are very devoted. You see on eBay people are still buying the games and system," he said. "We actually have a Dreamcast collection coming out soon. We are looking to bring some of the old Dreamcast games to market digitally and packaged. The titles are still to be announced. The Ultimate Genesis Collection did huge numbers on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, so it’s an important part of our business. We’ve already been releasing some Dreamcast games digitally; Crazy Taxi [for one]." This little bundle of nostalgia made me remember how totally ridiculous the Dreamcast's controller was.
Sandbox building game Minecraft will enter its beta phase on December 20. In a blog post, creator Markus "Notch" Persson announced a price hike from $13 to $20 once the beta arrives, along with a "larger focus on polish and content, [including] testing and stability." As a token of kept promises, current alpha account holders will continue to receive all future updates for free, while those who purchase the game during beta will need to pay extra for any future content. With the indie sensation raking in over $10.1 million in revenue so far, it's difficult to fathom that this whole thing is a one-man show.
Source code for Looking Glass Studios' Dark Engine is found in a bag after four years. After receiving a Dreamcast devkit, a modder named "game_player_s" discovered a treasure trove of assets from the now-defunct Looking Glass Studios, including unfinished Dreamcast ports of Thief 2 and System Shock 2. The magic doesn't stop there: After checking inside the bag the console came in, game_player_s found discs containing the source code of Thief, Thief 2, and System Shock 2, equated as the Holy Grail for the Looking Glass community and drawing a promising future for optimized versions of those games. Finally, someone can fix that annoying bug in Thief where my health bar skips every second indicator. [Rock, Paper, Shotgun]
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