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Guten Tag, you’ve certainly come to the right place. Now, before we get started, go grab a wurst and a chilled bier because once the words start coming you won’t want to leave your seat.
This is the gamescom 2012 Week in Review special, and by special I mean using German words when there’s really nicht need to do so.
The week began with conferences from Capcom, EA and Sony, and there was one clear winner. Sony used its 60 odd minutes to reveal a bunch of new and quite interesting IPs and gave hope that PS Vita is far from a lost cause.
The picks were clearly Media Molecule’s Tearaway for PS Vita and Puppeteer on PS3, both offering the kind of originality which is often overlooked in the hope of creating the next bullet-soaked macho hit, which girls are simply too stupid to play. Sehr gute.
Sony also revealed some great new initiatives for PS Vita, including confirmation of Cross-buy, PlayStation Plus for Vita, and support for PSone classics all likely to go some way to help the troubled handheld build some sales momentum as Christmas approaches. One way of generating better sales would be a price cut, but Sony says this won’t be happening this year.
Nicht so gut was the first footage of Activision’s Call of Duty Black Ops – Declassified, which went down like a sack of kartoffeln. The highly anticipated shooter from Nilhistic, creators of so-so Vita shooter Resistance Burning Skies, was easily overshadowed by the exponentially more exciting Killzone: Mercenary.
Black Ops II on the other hand is shaping up to be rather good, thanks to a re-jigged multiplayer which hopes to win over the e-sports crown.
FIFA is huge business across Europe so it was no surprise to see EA focus plenty of its attention of revealing some of the new features found in FIFA 13. Match Day looks to be a nifty addition, and you’ll be able to see what it’s all about when the playable demo hits download services on September 11. It was also rumoured that EA was contemplating selling to a private equity firm – those interested will need to raise somewhere in the region of $5 billion. Maybe the publisher knows something about the next-generation that we don’t.
Microsoft wasn’t at gamescom 2012, but did make the effort to reveal information on Halo 4’s Class Specialisations, although the manner in which the specialisations are being distributed hasn’t been well received.
All the gamescom excitement may have meant you missed out on reading our reviews of Sleeping Dogs and Darksiders II which both turned out to be well worth your investment, especially given we’ve been so starved of new releases in recent weeks.
I think that’s about it from me. Look out for lots more coverage from gamescom hitting the website in the coming week – I’m told Martin, Neon, Dave and Matt did actually do some work whilst in Germany – and have a great weekend.
Tschüs
