Video Game Saga *

Yakuza 3 Changed for North American Release, Grandia Available on Playstation Network, Left 4 Dead Rumored to Arrive on PS3, Unreal Engine 4 the Next Step in Gaming

From IGN.com

With the release of Yakuza 3 just two weeks away (March 9th in the States and March 12th in the U.K.), fans are beginning to go off the deep end about the beat'em up/RPG-like/Grand Theft Auto-like game that has you wandering the streets of Japan and wailing on bad guys silly enough to get in your way. However, one of the biggest questions on the minds of readers like you is did everything that made the game a hit in Japan make it into the U.S./U.K. versions?

The short answer is "no," but it's not as bad as you might think, according to a SEGA representative.

"The content between Yakuza 3 US/UK and Yakuza JP is a little different in that we took out certain bits in order to bring the game to the west in the time allotted for us to do so. The parts we ended up taking out were parts that we felt wouldn't make sense (like a Japanese history quiz game) or wouldn't resonate as much (such as the concept of a hostess club)," the rep told IGN. "We didn't replace the parts we took out, but we made absolutely sure that the story continuity stayed intact so that the story experience was the same as the Japanese version and that it didn't take away the human drama so inherent to the Yakuza series."

This is really no big deal.  Many times there are drastic changes concerning the localization of Japanese titles that we never hear about.  These changes are pretty minor--even though they are removing the hostess club, the strip clubs did make it into the final North American version of the game.  So you should still expect Yakuza 3 to be rated "M" for a reason!

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From Blog.US.Playstation.com:

Finally! Grandia will be available for download on the North American PlayStation Network for PlayStation 3 and PSP this Thursday for $9.99!

Since the title launched on the Japanese PlayStation Network in April of 2009, we have received many inquiries about the North American launch. And it wasn’t so easy to keep our lips zipped under such circumstances, but the day has finally come!

Grandia is an unforgettable journey with over 80 hours of gameplay, and it was released over 10 years ago for the PSOne and became one of the most critically acclaimed RPG games. The player assumes the role of Justin, a young boy obsessed with becoming a great adventurer, who inherits a magic stone that leads him on an epic journey to uncover the mystery of a long lost civilization. And, he meets other adventurers who join him on his quest and as he unravels the threads of the ancient legend, he draws the attention of the Garlyle Forces who devise diabolical schemes to stop him.

Grandia is one of the most beloved PSOne title, and if you have never played it, I highly recommend it.  Now, I'd love to see lesser known RPG's from the PSOne get the same treatment--I'd love to se a re-release of "Thousand Arms"!

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From IGN.com

PlayStation 3 owners have been dying to get a chance to play Valve's zombie franchise Left 4 Dead for some time. But now it looks like there's reason to start holding out hope.

Left 4 Dead writer Chet Faliszek recently told Edge the developer has been cautious with its approach to supporting the platform, but said he believes it'll happen eventually.

"Before we do anything on the PS3 we need to be able to support it in the right way," said Faliszek. "But we'll look at it, and I'm sure down the road we'll do it."

Left 4 Dead would be a great addition to the PS3 console, giving a new audience of gamers a shot of one of Valve's most successful titles.  The PC's version of this game has pretty much guaranteed that the port would sell extremely well.

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From Kotaku.com

Attending the DICE gaming summit to promote his company's Unreal Engine technology and celebrate the conclusion of the Make Something Unreal modding contest, Epic Games' Mark Rein said that the next generation of Unreal game-making tech is a ways off.

Rein told Kotaku that work is still underway on Unreal Engine 4, but that the release of the tech is "still a long ways off." How long off? "Unreal Engine 4 is designed for the day we get massively multi-core processors," he said, declining to say how many processors are needed to be defined as "massively-multi." The Xbox 360 and PlayStation three, which each have a few to several cores don't count. And, he said, the next generation of consoles may not qualify either.

Rein believes UE3 has a lot of life yet, pointing to the top entries of the Make Something Unreal contest (more on that later) and the continued advances in the UE3 tech. The last time Epic wanted to show how far Unreal Engine had come along, Epic demonstrated Gears of War 2. Time to show us Gears of War 3? The DICE summit is not where Mark Rein was making announcements.

Nice to hear that it's coming along well—no real rush for it's release, with the success of the UNREAL 3 Engine and games like Mass Effect and Gears of War, the UE3 engine is by no means out of date.  A lot of people don't realize how important this engine is, but it has played a huge role in setting the bar in next gen graphics.  This is courtesy of Wikipedia to let you know some games you may have heard of, that are using the UNREAL 3 engine:

2009 America's Army 3.0

2008 American McGee's Grimm

2008 Army of Two

2009 Batman: Arkham Asylum

2008 Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway

2007 BlackSite: Area 51

2009 Borderlands

2010 Dark Void

2008 Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon[24]

2009 Fairytale Fights

2006 Gears of War

2008 Gears of War 2

2007 Lost Odyssey

2007 Mass Effect

2010 Mass Effect 2

2010 Medal of Honor

2007 Medal of Honor: Airborne

2008 Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe

2007 Stranglehold

2008 Tom Clancy's EndWar

2006 Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas

2008 Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2

2007 Unreal Tournament 3

2006 Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent

2010 Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction

2007 BioShock

2010 BioShock 2

2009 X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Wikipedia lists 62 more titles... Yeah, this graphics engine is pretty important.

See you next week!