Slim fast
Lightning strikes thrice!
New Slim PS3 alerts! Sony have made two new PlayStation 3 SKUs with a sleek, sliding lid covering the disc tray. A 500Gb model is out now, while a scaled back 12Gb Flash memory version (sure to cause many a mandatory install nightmare) will be released in a matter of days.
It’s the JRPG that keeps on giving. Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII is officially the third game in the JRPG sub-series, but this time original heroine Lightning is the only character. It’s set over 13 days and clocks continue to be a core component of the story.
New engine! New mysteries! New open- world gameplay! Metal Gear Solid is back and bigger than ever! linking back into the searchlights of gamers everywhere, Metal Gear Solid is set to bestow a final hurrah on current-gen consoles, thanks to an incredibly powerful, eye-wateringly impressive new engine, and with legendary Metal Gear mastermind Hideo Kojima firmly back in the driving seat. At an event held in Tokyo to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the series, incredible footage of the latest MGS outing, Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes, stunned onlookers as Big Boss (or Naked Snake for MGS3: Snake Eater veterans) makes a return as the central protagonist. An awful lot of info was contained in the presentation for fans to speculate on, while it also shows off Big Boss’s new ability to drive vehicles found in the game, call in a support chopper and navigate an expansive open world. That’s right, Ground Zeroes is to be an open world game, with players capable of moving between massive mission locations, spread across a number of different countries.
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Omega man
Info FORMAT 360, PS3 OUT TBC DEVELOPER Kojima Productions PUBLISHER Konami WHAT IS IT? The ninth (count ‘em) main entry in the Metal Gear franchise and a return for MGS3 and Peace Walker protagonist Big Boss.
The cinematic presentation kicks off as we pan past a sign for prison camp Omega. Three men walk by, one wearing a waterproof poncho that billows in the blustering wind. It’s immediately apparent that the new Fox Engine, which Kojima says he hopes will make it easier for Kojima Productions (and possibly Konami) to make high quality, multi-platform games quickly, is an impressive piece of kit. Camp searchlights make soaked surfaces glisten and the textures, from the waterlogged ground to the burnished slide of a submachine gun, look near indistinguishable from real life. Moving through the camp, the mystery men approach an iron cage, with a small boy hunched over inside. We later discover that this is Chico, imprisoned along with Paz from Peace Walker. The shady leader of the men chucks a cassette player in through the bars and Chico scrabbles to snatch it up, plugging in earphones from a jack imbedded in his chest. As the man stands and walks away we see that his face is heavily scarred, though we still can’t make out who he is. The familiar track of Here’s To You by Joan Baez (which was included in the MGS4 soundtrack) plays out in the background as the man joins a humvee convoy. Who is this scarred villain? Is he a totally new character? Or someone we already know in a state of ill repair? A quick shot of a reversed FOX insignia in a rear view mirror implies that he could be a member of the military unit founded by Zero and The Boss. Shortly after, our mystery man erases a reversed FOX logo from a military helicopter and lobs a fistful of FOX badges into the winds, implying some hefty double crossery is taking place before us.
AN OPEN WORLD GAME, WITH PLAYERS CAPABLE OF MOVING BETWEEN MASSIVE LOCATIONS DECEMBER 2012
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