Respawn Entertainment and EA have confirmed Titanfall for release on March 11, 2014 for Xbox 360 and One. In addition, they have revealed the $250 Collector’s Edition. This will include the game, an art book (190+ pages), full size schematic of an Atlas Titan, and an 18” hand-crafted Atlas Titan Statue diorama with LED lights. I’m sticking with $250 is an awful lot of money for a game, but that statue is fantastic if you’ve got a place for it.
Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD, the pretty PS3/360 upgrade of the former Vita-exclusive, was confirmed last month. Last week, the January 14, 2014 release date was also confirmed. As an added bonus, purchasing the Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag Season Pass gets you a 25% discount. The Vita version wasn’t bad, but it had some issues. My biggest gripe, the Lady persona’s inability to climb, will not be addressed in this version, but the upgraded visuals will be nice. See the picture for a comparison. And yes, I get why the Lady can’t climb, but I don’t play Assassin’s Creed to walk around twirling my umbrella.
Conversely, Telltale’s The Wolf Among Us has been confirmed as coming to PS Vita this Fall. More specifics are not yet available, but it looks like Episode One: Faith should be available on the go before the entire five episode story is available on console.
Yoshinori Ono mentioned on Twitter recently that Capcom is hiring a game designer and programmer to work on a new fighting game. He did not confirm that the game, which is in very early development, is for next-gen consoles, but that is the safe assumption. Is this a new Street Fighter? Possibly. Time will tell. Or you could just apply for the job and let us know.
“I want… no, Capcom wants Game Designer and programer for New Fighting. Its location at Tokyo or Osaka Studio.”
Sony has added yet another title to its line-up of cheap upgrades to PS4, Injustice: Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition. The PS4 digital edition will be available at the console’s launch for only $10 for current owners. As with the other titles in the offer, you will need to keep the PS3 disc in the PS4 drive to validate your discounted content, as well as provide a unique code from the original packaging. If you purchased the game digitally via PSN, the PS4 store will recognize that and offer the same discounted price. Please note, this is confirmed only for the Ultimate Edition that was recently released and includes the DLC content. Original versions of the game from April 2013 will not get you a cheap upgrade.
The online stimulus package for Grand Theft Auto Online has been delayed until all of the bugs are completely eliminated. It’s a bit slow to fulfill a promise but it makes sense. Giving you an extra $500,000 only to have it vanish with your player doesn’t do anyone any good. In the meantime, despite a plague of issues, they are releasing DLC in early November. The “Beach Bum” Pack will include new weapons and beach-themed vehicles for the story portion of Grand Theft Auto V. The online content from the add-on will have new customization options for your character (tattoos, hair, etc.) and additional jobs, deathmatches, races, and what have you. The DLC will be free, so at least they aren’t charging to expand their glitched game. The Content Creator and Social Club events are both still in coming soon purgatory.
PlayStation 4 will have a firmware update available at its November 15th launch. V1.50 weighs in at a fairly hefty but not unreasonable 300MB. Without this firmware update, several of the features you may have been expecting at launch will not be accessible, including:
- Remote Play on Vita
- Second Screen for Vita and the PlayStation App
- Recording and uploading gameplay and screen shots
- Gameplay broadcasting and spectating
- Play while downloading (for supported software)
- Multi-user login (up to 4 players on one console)
- Party/Voice chat (8 person, mixed with PS4 and Vita)
- Face and Voice recognition with the optional camera or included headset
- Background music player via Music Unlimited
- Online multiplayer
- Blu-ray and DVD video playback.
I’m cool with a day one update, I even expected it, but aren’t some of these the basic core of the system? Did you really not have multiplayer or video playback enabled when you sent it off to manufacturing?
That’s all for this week’s early edition. Which also means that’s all for October. Wow. Another month in 2013 is gone. This was a great month too: LEGO Marvel Super Heroes, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Batman: Arkham Origins (and Blackgate), Beyond: Two Souls, etc. Next month is a little weaker on the game releases, but we’re literally counting down the days to next-gen. Does your advent calendar count down to November 15th, or November 22nd?
Have a safe and enjoyable Halloween everyone! Then check back here on Friday to feed your candy hangover with more game news.