Naruto Shippuden Legends: Akatsuki Rising takes players through the Rescue Gaara arc of the anime, but not through a series of one on one matches. This Naruto game is a 3D brawler.

At E3 I played Akatsuki Rising and punched my way through an unrelenting group of inept ninja. Mashing square usually did the trick. If you want to do something more flashy Naruto has his trademark jutsus linked to the R button. The game felt a lot like Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles 2 right down to the plastic-y 3D models.

In this game you don’t have to be one of the heroes. You can see the other side of the story and play the game as an Akatsuki member like Itachi. Screenshots show Sasori, Kisame, and Deidara will be in the game too. Namco Bandai says the total roster has over 15 characters. The game also supports ad-hoc play — cooperative and competitive. Players can fight each other in the game’s versus mode.

Unlike last year where a slew of Naruto games popped up during the holidays, Naruto Shippuden Legends: Akatsuki Rising is the only Namco Bandai game starring the orange ninja scheduled to come out later this year. North America gets it on the PSP this fall. It seems like Namco Bandai developed this game specifically for North America. Akatsuki Rising is not a localized version of an existing Japanese game. Actually, Akatsuki Rising doesn’t even have a scheduled release date in Japan.

http://www.siliconera.com/2009/06/10...awling-to-psp/ ...

Even though Tecmo announced Undead Knights before their merger with Koei, the PSP game feels like the unholy zombie child Dynasty Warriors of Pikmin.

In Undead Knights you hack and slash medieval troops and transform slain warriors into zombie minions. You can command your zombies to “rip them apart” and rush their former allies. Players can control up to ten zombies at a time. Zombies can also siege bases and demolish enemy structures like guard towers. During E3 a representative from Tecmo showed an area where you need to toss zombies a set number of zombies at a gate to smash it before moving on. Out of all the ways Tecmo chose to use zombies the zombie ladder is my personal favorite.

Undead Knights might not revolutionize the tactical action genre, but there seems to be a little more strategy in this game. Also, you can chuck zombies, which is so ridiculous I’m inclined to believe Undead Knights is going to be campy fun. Undead Knights is scheduled to come out on the PSP this fall.

http://www.siliconera.com/2009/06/10...craves-brains/ ...

When Assassin's Creed was downgraded to the DS and iPhone, it became an entirely different game. The upcoming PSP version, however, looks to be sticking a lot closer to the original than its handheld competitors.

While these two screens don't really show how the game will function mechanically, they do at least show that it's a full 3D title, with Altair stalking the streets of what look to be much smaller (and for the PSP more easily-managed) medieval cities.

For the record, Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines, as the game is known as, is no port; it is instead an all-new game, bridging the events between the first game and the upcoming sequel.

http://kotaku.com/5285177/assassins-...-looksfamiliar ...

When Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata took to the stage last week to unveil the Wii Vitality Sensor, he didn't really tell us how it all worked. No, that information now comes a week later.

Seems that the WVS works by measuring the flow of blood through the user's body, a small light sensor inside the device somehow able to measure that flow and determine various characteristics of your body's workings.

For instance, by watching your blood flow, the sensor can apparently determine when and how hard you're breathing in and out. One of the "games" demonstrated with the device - which may or may not make it into a "game" for the WVS - was a simple breathing exercise, as users timed their breathing to the tick/tock of a metronome.

How this can be used to enjoyment is at this stage up in the air. And until we get a firmer idea on what games/programs will be shipping with the WVS, we won't know whether it'll be the next revolutionary million-seller from Nintendo, or the next piece of hokey psuedo-science from Nintendo. Or both.

http://kotaku.com/5285232/how-the-wi...actually-works

Who actually cares about this new hardware from Nintendo ? ...

With its forgiving gameplay, Ubisoft was clearly trying to make the new Prince of Persia appeal to more casual or mainstream audience. So, IndustryGamers asked producer Ben Mattes, why not bring the game to the ultimate casual console: The Wii?

Mattes said that the system just couldn't handle what his team wanted to achieve, saying "the AI of Elika was highly advanced and required a lot of processing power; the world size and dynamic loading, the draw distance, the number of polygons in the characters... If we had done a Wii version, it would have been toned down, probably linear, it wouldn't have been an open-world game, and so it would have been a very different experience. We didn't want to water it down that way."

... Plus, they couldn't have charged Wii owners $10 for the "Epilogue" DLC! No, no, we kid.

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/06/09/ub...ersia-for-wii/ ...

Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter hates the PSP Go. Alright, alright, he doesn't quite hate it, but he does despise its price point. On a recent episode of Bonus Round, Pachter matter of factly states, "$249 is too much. Period." He goes on to say that while the handheld is priced to compete with Apple's $229 8GB iPod Touch, it doesn't deliver the iTunes App Store or downloadable music from iTunes (as conveniently, at least, as the iPod Touch).

Furthermore, he posits the $250 price of the PSP Go is vastly overinflated considering its contents, claiming it costs Sony less to build and ship the PSP Go than the PSP-3000 model, "The $169 PSP-3000 is a profitable device -- the disc assembly, for a UMD, costs more than 16 gigs of flash does. So this new device doesn't cost them as much as the PSP-3000 and they jack the price up $80?" When Keighley presses Pachter as to whether Sony is "ripping off" the consumer or not, he answers, "They're rippin' off the consumer ... they're making a lot more money on the PSP Go than the PSP-3000."

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/06/09/pa...s-with-psp-go/ ...

Time has passed, and it's time to look back. Does Sony Computer Entertainment honcho Kaz Hirai have any regrets?

When asked if including a Blu-ray drive on the PS3 was a mistake, Hirai replied, "Purely from a gaming standpoint there was no other choice for us." The reason being, Hirai explained, that the disc capacity is essential. "Last year's Metal Gear Solid 4 was pushing 50GB as it was," Hirai told The Guardian. "If it was on DVD it would have been a 6 disc set. The packaging and cost would have been prohibitive and it would have been hugely inconvenient to consumers."

What's more, the PS3 helped Sony get a leg up in the format war. Winning that format war was a bright spot for Sony — and the company isn't looking to abandon it any time soon. C"onceptually it may make sense to remove the Blu-Ray drive but in reality it doesn't make sense," said Hirai. "Also we never want to be in the position where countries without super fast broadband connections are locked out of the PlayStation business because the PS3 has gone download only."

The PS3 launch, however, wasn't as smooth as the company would have liked. Does Sony have any regrets? "Looking back if we could have done it again we probably would have not gone for the simultaneous worldwide launch," Hirai said. The exec pointed out that it's not so much how a console starts, but how it finishes — take the PS2, for example.

"For other consoles which have a five year life cycle it is much easier to judge performance after two years," said Hirai. "But for us, with the 10 year life cycle we have, it is premature to judge after such a short time."

http://kotaku.com/5285546/sony-any-r...ray-ps3-launch ...

Leading iPhone game publisher Ngmoco has no plans to release exclusive games for the newly announced iPhone 3GS, instead offering a more creative way to take advantage of the new model's increased graphical power.

MTV Multiplayer, the website that used to be Totilo's playground, spoke to Ngmoco co-founder Neil Young on the subject of the new, more powerful, more expensive iPhone that Apple announced on Monday. He explained that the company that brought us Rolando and Star Defense plans to continue releasing games that play across the entire iPhone family, rather than branching off to 3GS specific titles.

That doesn't mean the company won't be taking advantage of the new device's increased abilities. The solution, which the company is implementing in the upcoming iPhone first-person shooter, LiveFire, tears a page out of the PC game development handbook.

"We're scaling the imagery based on the performance of the device, so if you've got a 3GS, the game's going to look better and run at a great frame rate. And if you're on an iPhone 3G, the game will look a little bit different, but the frame rate will be the same, 'cause obviously performance and speed are actually an important part of a cool first person shooter gameplay experience."

A perfect solution to delivering a similar game play experience across platforms with different technical specifications. They are sharp, those Ngmoco folks.

http://kotaku.com/5285942/ngmoco-say...3gs-exclusives ...

We may never see the full-blown glory of what was to be Star Wars: Battlefront III coming to a console, but at least the portable versions of the franchise lives on.

What Is It?
Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron will have players take on the role of clone trooper X2 who switches sides to join the Rebellion and fight his brother X1. More importantly, this Playstation Portable third-person shooter will let you battle on the ground, in the air and in space.

What We Saw
I played around in a skirmish for ten minutes or so trying ground combat, air combat and space combat.

How Far Along Is It?
The game is set to hit the Playstation Portable this fall and was about 90 percent complete when I played it.

What Needs Improvement?
Ground combat: A key issue with the game are its still-sloppy controls. Playing a third-person shooter, even with a lock-on option, on a portable is almost always a task. Rebellion should spend a bulk of their remaining time developing the game working on the precision of the game's controls.

Transitions: I'm sure this is a limitation of the platform, but it would be nice if Elite Squadron has seamless transitions instead of the little cut-scene it forces you to watch every time.

What Should Stay The Same?
Air and Space Combat: While the ground controls for the game can be annoying, I found that air and space combat was a bit easier to deal with. Maybe the fluid motion of the starcraft or the fact that you expect the controls to feel a bit different when you're in a vehicle, helped.

Ground to Space: Even with those mini cut-scenes, being able to run around on the ground shooting it out with bad guys, and then jump in a ship and strafe and finally fly up into space and take on Capital ships is pretty spectacular. It gives the game a sense of scale rarely found in a portable.

Deep Interactions: Not only can you transition between the game's three levels, what you do in one place can have a deep impact in the other. You can, for instance, shoot at Capital ships with Ion cannons from the ground and then go into space to finish off the job. You can also land in a ship and do combat inside the halls of what you were once flying around. It's pretty cool.

Multiplayer: While there's a single player campaign in Elite Squadron, this game is really about multiplayer and comes packed with modes including the routine, like Deathmatch, and the unique, like Heroes vs. Villains. Tons of replayability here.

Pre-Set Load Outs: Because mulitplayer combat is so quick it's important to be able to customize your charcter's load out without having to mess around too much. This time around the game includes a number of pre-set load outs that you can quickly swap between while waiting to respawn.

Final Thoughts
I'm a big fan of the Battlefront series of games. It's one of the shooters I enjoy playing on the Playstation Portable and this new ability to move from ground to space is a huge plus for the franchise. I feel fairly confident that the developers have the time and ability to tweak the controls enough between now and release to make it a title worth picking up.

http://kotaku.com/5284709/star-wars-...-air-and-space ...