Screw plot spoilers! The really fun stuff in Metal Gear Solid has always been Kojima’s sense of humour. So! If you do not want any of your fourth wall Metal Gear Solid 4 humour ruined, do not watch this! Everyone else click and chuckle at format ribbing.
Thanks to all who sent this in!
Ed’s Update: Konami has taken down the clip. Hit the jump for screens and rundown of the conversation.
UPDATE: the above is claimed to be the first nine minutes of gameplay in Metal Gear Solid 4.
Since we were tipped to both the unboxing video and the opening sequence around 6 pm Crecente time, we’ve been flooded with tips to other videos. The above, uploaded within the past hour, was cut to fit YouTube’s 10 minute requirement.
After the jump, video of someone unboxing the 80 GB PS3 Metal Gear Solid 4 bundle four days before the street date. It’s 5 minutes in a single take so, looks pretty legit. Also after the jump, another video showing the MGS4 intro/start menu video.
Shacknews is reporting, via “a reliable source”, that once Star Wars: The Force Unleashed drops in mid-September, LucasArts will pinkslip another 100 employees and quit internal development.
Force Unleashed is the first internally developed 360 and PS3 title for LA, and the first LA-developed title since Republic Commando for the Xbox in 2005. There is, as Yoda might say, another …
That would be the untitled Indiana Jones third-person actioner, and according to Shacknews, the remainder of its work, left after The Force Unleashed hits the street, will be outsourced. Shacknews notes that past and present development partners include TT Games, Day 1, BioWare, Pandemic and, reaching way back, Totally Games (X-Wing, TIE Fighter).
Source: LucasArts to Halt Internal Development [Shacknews]
Metal Gear Solid 4 dominates the releases this week, dropping on Thursday. NASCAR 09 and Dragon Ball Z pick up the leftovers on Tuesday, plus there’s the Don King-branded boxing game which, come on, how can that game not have an ultra-realistic litigation engine built in, if it’s Don King. So, if you game on the PS3, this is pretty much your week to shine. Let us know what you’re buying, and if you’re buying a PS3 just to play MGS4, in the comments.
GameInfoWire.com has about a dozen new screen shots of Dawn of War II up. These follow the gameplay video that went up midweek. I’m gonna keep my trap shut about the game. Warhammer 40,000 scared the bejabbers out of me and my basic set D&D friends when we were in school. Mostly because the only kids who played it had passes to the smoking pit and grew moustaches. So, here’s one, and there are four full-size after the jump and the rest on GameInfoWire, and please don’t give me a noogie or a titty-twister, sir. Owwww ….
Got this far and realised we’ve had no hot flashes this weekend. So here’s a super-slimmed down Super Mario Kart, done in 11 KB of pure javascript goodness. Pick from Mario, Luigi or Peach and then race on two different maps. It even has a soundtrack.
You’ll be beaten off the line easily every time, but if you race the second map and take advantage of the turns, you can get into first pretty quickly.
There’s no timer or lap count and your opponents seem to float in the air until you overtake them. Still, I killed a few minutes with this while going off on a reverie, wondering if I’ll be 55 and playing a slimmed down javascript Assassin’s Creed or something.
Javascript Super Mario Kart [nihilogic]
There’s a lot of dissatisfaction regarding how games are reviewed coming from a number of quarters; there is an equally vociferous defence of the typical numerically-based reviews. Over at GameSetWatch, Simon Parkin takes up the issue of the reviewer-reader divide, especially in terms of what readers want out of a review (even if they don’t know it):
The average reader (even if they don’t know it) is after a complete objective, scientific comparison between game x and game y with data and statistics and, finally, a numerical point on a linear scale by which they can compare, for example, Mass Effect with Rock Band and see which one is empirically better.
Except, of course, video games don’t work in the same way as toasters or digital cameras. Sure, they have mathematical elements and measurable mechanics and it’s possible to compare the number of polygons between this one and that and spin out ten thousand graphs detailing how two specimens compare. But, unlike with the Canon EOS400D, I would have no idea at the end of those 25 pages which game was better or where they would sit on the ‘true’ scale of quality.
And happily, no one was on hand to grief it. A 41-year-old Japanese man who suffers from a progressive muscle disease that has left him almost totally paralysed, moved his Second Life character about a virtual environment using his brain waves, reports Agence France-Presse.
The experiment is significant because the signals his brain sent to move the character came from the man imagining that he was walking. He also used a microphone to meet and converse with another Second Lifer. Then a swarm of flying penises surrounded him and the appalled researchers. OK, just kidding about that.
That’s not R5-D4′s brother, it’s a modded Wiimote that a German student envisions for use in a virtual graffiti world.
Martin Lihs, student at Bauhas-University in Weimar, built the “Wiispray” for his thesis. He wants the wall to encourage graffiti artists to express themselves without the artistic encumberances of balancing on a highway overpass railings, getting chased by railroad police, or, like getting arrested.
Sounds fun and creative but people tag up real walls for a reason — real people see ‘em. All the commissioned murals, coffee table books and contests for graffiti artists provide real recognition to, but not like getting up on a warehouse wall. The essential act of graffiti is painting where you’re not supposed to paint, right?
WiiSpray Prototype Graffiti Controller for Wii [Slashgear, via Engadget]
