GamesBloggo - Your source on game news! January 2009

According to what was reported by several users on the official LittleBigPlanet forum, the outfits inspired on the Metal Gear Solid saga are creating several problems.

The bugs that were found go from the deletion of contents created locally or downloaded through PSN and stored on the hard disk, to the loss of game progress in the single-mode campaign. It didn’t take long for players to swarm the official forums with their complaints.

We hope that Media Molecule will be able to solve the issues as soon as possible. In the meantime, click here to go to the official forums.

Only a few months for the launching of the game, and Electronic Arts has already launched a new video and new pictures for The Sims 3, trying to guarantee the same sucess to this new chapter as for the previous ones.

There’s not much to say about the game that isn’t already well known: in its first chapter, it became famous as the most purchased videogame for PC in the history, repeating the success with the second chapter. It’s useless to comment any further on a game series that is already famous and loved by many fans.

And it’s for these fans that EA dedicates the video that can be seen below. The video shows the graphics that will be present in the game for PC and Mac OS-x on February 2009.

You can also find the pictures in the end of this article. Enjoy.

Click on the thumbnail to see the full image.

The Playstation Blog has officially announced  the arrival of additional contents for LittleBigPlanet based on Metal Gear Solid 4. It also has published some details and videos.

The new material will arrive in the form of outfits and level packs next December 23rd, at least in America, but it’s easy to suppose it’ll arrive in Europe too. The price will be of $1,99 for each one of them and $5,99 for the whole pack. The sackboys will be able to dress up as Solid Snake, Meryl Silverburgh, Screaming Mantis or Raiden.

The true big new addition will be the level pack containing new game levels and many elements for their own home creation, including stickers, objects, but more importantly, the Paintinator: a weapon that gives the sackboys unexpected new potential, as it can be seen from the video below.

Sony has decided to give a free outfit to all LittleBigPlanet players for Christmas, obviously inspired on the Christmas theme.

With the mini-packet downloadable from tomorrow, besides the buyable Street Fighter outfits, players will be able to dress their Sackboys as Santa Claus, with two different stages: first, the classical red suit, and on December 18, users will be able to use the hat, moustaches and beard for a full dress-up in Christmas theme.

Sony has released a new skin pack for LittleBigPlanet’s sackboys, available for download in the PlayStation Store. The pack adds the Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix costumes to the sackboys’ wardrobe, as an hommage to some of the icons of the series, such as Ryu and Chun Li.

Each costume can be bought for $1,99, while the whole pack with 4 costumes, including those of Guile and Zangief can be bought as a pack for $5,99.

It’s clear that Facebook has changed the social network environment, but this new independent initiative might pose a challenge to the famous social network. It’s SacBook, a reviewed and corrected version of Facebook that was built especially for LittleBigPlanet’s sackboys. The site was built by game users, and it’s non-official for now, but it features sackboys from all around the world, information on the game and on the levels created by the gamer community.

The address is http://www.sackbook.com for those who want to take a look

The open-to-the-public nature of LittleBigPlanet makes it a rather unique game, but also very hard to manage as well. The developers need to constantly control a bit number of material shared online, daily, by the community, and they have been applying a rather rigit control, often cancelling levels without giving further explanations to players. Some of those players end up complaining rather often in the official forums.

Sony is fully aware of the problem and promises a constant enhancement on their moderation system for LittleBigPlanet. Sony reassures players that they’re “are moving towards a system whereby rather than receiving a generic message any affected user will also receive an indication of what was found to be infringing on the EULA. We’re additionally looking to provide clear, plain language directions on what is and is not acceptable to be published through the game”.

In general, this happens because the levels feature elements that are considered offensive to the public, or present copyrighted elements. And in this matter, Media Molecule recommends that in order to avoid cancellations, players should “Ensure that the content you share with other users is suitable for all ages - everybody has access to your level if you publish it. Please respect other people’s intellectual property rights. For example, don’t use images, brands or logos that you’re not entitled to use. If you come across any content that you feel the need to report, then please do it responsibly. Hoax reports will be considered inappropriate behaviour”.

Sony has also declared that currently 177.657 levels are shared for LittleBigPlanet.

The reedition of Banjo Kazooie for Live Arcade has been postponed to December 3rd. The game is basically already present on the Microsoft’s digital delivery, but it’s “unreachable” to most part of the players, being, for now, an exclusive to those that pre-ordered Nuts and Bolts. Due also to some issues with download codes that were missing in some retail stores, the decision was to postpone the official release of a few days.

Banjo Kazooie for Live Arcade is basically the same game that was released for Nintendo 64, with re-edited graphics in order to suit the high-definition standards. It should be available on Live Arcade on December 3rd, for the price of 1200 Microsoft Points. It also features the particular function “Swop’n Swop”, that allows players to unlock new contents as they advance in both the Live Arcade version of Banjo Kazooie and the new Nuts and Bolts title.

In occasion of the American release for the new “Creepy & Cute Parts pack” pack for Spore, Electronic Arts has decided to release a new patch for Will Wright’s “global simulator”. The update should solve some game issues, but also bring 24 new body parts (legs, arms, feet and others) in order to create new creatures with inedit combinations.

The “Creepy & Cute Parts Pack” should be available this week also in Europe, both on the EA Store and retail stores.

Producer Ben Mattes, responsible for the new Prince of Persia being developed by Ubisoft, has announced that the downloadable contents will not only be available for the new action-adventure, but they will also mean “significant add-ons” to the main game. However, the launching for these contents hasn’t yet been decided. “The intention is to create downloadable contents that are meaningful, so I don’t think you will see expansions with new clothes, new weapons or things like that”, said Mattes, “if we’ll do it, it will be to add a new story, a new experience, maybe a prequel or a sequel - we’ll do something that really means something to the player”.

Prince of Persia is scheduled to be available on the first week of December, and it will represent a new start on the famous saga. The main story should last, according to Mattes, from 12 to 18 hours, but if the player wants to uncover the many secrets, the gaming time might be extended to 18-24 hours. The Ubisoft producer also said that there’s no plans for possible sequels, for now it seems it will be a self-standing title, after all.