Hey everyone, I’m Michael Santora, an Associate Producer from PopCap Games, bringing you all of our titles in association with Sony Online Entertainment. So far, the response to our classic titles, Zuma and Bejeweled 2, has been fantastic, so we’re excited to bring another of our favorite titles to Europe, Heavy Weapon.

Having grown up on classic arcade shooters and original game consoles, Heavy Weapon holds a special place in my heart. It’s a true shooter game that always reminds me of my youth, pumping quarters into machines at the local arcade. Heavy Weapon was originally developed on the PC for Windows, but it’s now found a home on the PLAYSTATION3 computer entertainment system. The DUALSHOCK twin analog sticks give moving & shooting in independent directions a more arcade-like feel. Playing survival mode online or locally with your friends is a great way to earn the “Survive 12 Minutes” Trophy. Multiplayer mode lets you play with up to 3 other people so you can play with old friends or new ones!

Heavy Weapon fans can enjoy a new feature exclusive to the PS3: the ability to shoot down and destroy the supply helicopter as it delivers power ups to you. It makes some of the later levels a bit more challenging since you have to pay more attention to your allies while you’re shooting down everything else in the sky.

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Hi everybody.

I am Prakash Ahuja, CEO of GameShastra, one of the lead developers on PSP Platform. I have always believed that the PlayStation provides an amazing gaming experience and PSPgo is an exciting addition to the family.

At Gameshastra, we have a vibrant team that is developing entertaining, immersive games for PSP platform. D-Cube our first game is about a Lilliputian alien from a distant galaxy on his journey to earth. He has crash landed into a strange planet – the D-Cube. He must recover and assemble all the parts of his spaceship to continue with his voyage. The planet itself is a giant maze filled with cubes that only move in a particular direction. You have to guide him through these puzzles and help him collect the spaceship parts.

Circles, Circles, Circles is our next game. It is a brain teasing puzzle game where you need to conquer the golden zero in the world of circles using basic math skills. This is followed by Laserwars – an action puzzle game setup in an asylum where you split and deflect an array of beams to its target. Our fourth game is the awesome bike ride down the famous Route 66 connecting Chicago and Los Angeles where you search and find hidden objects in the journey.

We have a suite of over 30 games under development for PSP and the goal is to release a couple of games every month. We are working with the leading publishers on other consoles and porting their games with rich experience to this great new platform.

I have always believed that downloadable games are the future of gaming industry and the gaming industry is going to follow the music industry in moving towards the single download of addictive immersive games to be played anytime anywhere!!

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On the first day of Tokyo Games Show, Level 5 took us on a tour through the online system of White Knight Chronicles. Now even if you’ve been keeping up with the previously-released Japanese version of the game, this will be news to you.

Online mode opens up for you once you’ve completed Chapter 1 in Story Mode, and features 3 main facets of play – GeoNet, Georama, and Subquests

GeoNet is a social networking service for WKC online players, where you can meet and interact with other players to get set for multiplayer quests.

Georama is where you can design your own “HomeTown”, which serves as a lobby for the online mode. There are 3 different fields to build your Georama in with 18 different combinations. You’ll drop in buildings, infrastructure, and even modify the earth itself. A 2D city sim this is not. Examples were shown where players could make hedge mazes or pixel art in the towns. What’s cool is you can recruit NPCs from the story mode to come live in your town. The NPCs have jobs of different levels, which will further change the town. Also, you and others can shop in the shops that you create. Up to a dozen players can enter one Georama at once, and from there you can head out questing. Hundreds (or more) parts and elements were shown – it’s pretty deep. Of note: North American players will be able to visit the Georama town of European friends, and vice versa.

Subquest – unlike the story mode, which centers around Leonard, you control your own avatar in this mode. As the story unfolds, quests will become available. When you are successful, you’ll accumulate points which will build your guild rank. The higher the rank, the more quests and weapons that are available for you. You can quest with friends or use the random matching system to be paired up with likeminded strangers. 50 subquests will be available at launch, and new ones will be added along the way online.

Oh, btw: Voice Chat confirmed! It’ll also be patched into the Japanese version at some point in the future. An additional exclusive feature for North American and European gamers: Rogue Galaxy’s Live Talk feature will be implemented. Characters will issue forth a “huge variety” of context-specific commentary as the quests unfold. Of course, all the updates the Japanese release has seen will be on the disc when it hits North America and Europe in Spring 2010.

For more on the game, look for an interview with Level-5 soon.

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Hi Everyone,

Following the release of Fate/Unlimited Codes for the PSP we’ve teamed up with those good fellows at PlayStation to give away a PSP Go and Fate goodies! One lucky winner will take away a PSP Go, a download code for a full copy of the game and, most exciting of all, a Fate/Unlimited Codes t-shirt and mug! What’s that I hear you say ‘Just a t-shirt and mug?!’ . . . well my friends, these aren’t available outside of Japan and this is your one chance to get your hands on these desirable goodies!

Head over to the competitions page for your chance to enter.

The following territories can participate: Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates and UK.

We also got two new combo videos from the game to help you out in your quest for the Holy Grail. The first show Kotomine in action (my old vicar never displayed those kind of skills during his sermons!)

The second shows Assasin unleashing the pain:

Keep your eyes peeled for more hints and tips on the game in the coming weeks.

All the best

Rich

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As promised, here’s our TGS interview with Team ICO’s Director, Fumito Ueda. Our TGS coverage will continue throughout the week with more interviews coming soon. So keep an eye out for those.

If you missed the new The Last Guardian trailer, make sure you take a look, then watch Jeff natter with one of the industry’s great names in our video interview below.

Day one of TGS was a bit out of hand. While Jem was downstairs digging into Valkyria Chronicles 2, I had the opportunity to meet with Team ICO’s Fumito Ueda. Decisions, decisions.

Though Ueda-san wasn’t up for spilling *too many* details on the upcoming The Last Guardian, he did give some interesting insight into the way he and his team make games. He also hints that maybe we don’t know how this game is going to play out, after all.

Oh, and there was one pressing question that I didn’t ask – because Joystiq and Kotaku already beat me to it (“Will there ever be a PS3 remake of Ico/Shadow of the Colossus a la the God of War collection?”). Check out their stories for his answer.

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