It seems that I just can’t keep away from our favourite blog and, like a comic book villain, I just keep coming back. Scott here again from TikGames-Creat Studios, happy to let you all know about our latest game for PSN, SkyFighter, now available in Europe for €9.99/£7.99.

Are you brave enough to take on the best of the best? Are your flying skills good enough for the elite SkyFighter airborne squadron? If so, then prepare to engage the hostile enemy fleet in side-scrolling aerial combat. Day or night, over land or sea, SkyFighter’s fast-paced missions will enlist you to bomb the enemy’s equipment and fortifications, shoot down their fighters with your machine gun and destroy their hostile bombers with your missiles.

Pilot all kinds of aircraft, from light, aerobatic, manoeuvrable fighters to the devastating flying fortress. The action isn’t all dogfights, either. Stealth Missions require you to take cover in clouds, avoid search lights and dodge floating air mines. Prepare to battle heavily armoured trains, powerful battleships and even the monstrous enemy fortress.

Be sure to make some room on the couch for local multiplayer. Recruit a partner for two player Campaign Mode. Or, when you need a break from performing missions and saving the world, gather your friends and show them how you dominant you are. In the Dogfight Mode, up to eight players can test their stunt flying skills and determine who really rules the skies.

SkyFighter supports full 1080p High Definition, custom music and SIXAXIS controls. You can even shake your controller to extinguish the flames when your plane is on fire!

Everyone at TikGames and Creat Studios is thrilled to bring our eleventh (yes, eleventh!) title to PlayStation Network. We do hope you enjoy the high-flying action of SkyFighter, and we want to know what you think. Please check us out on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, @CreatStudios, and stop by our websites, TikGames Creat Studios. We’re always listening, and we couldn’t do what we love without you!

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Roland Fauster, manager of the German PlayStation.Blog, recently spoke to VooFoo Studios‘ Technology Director, Mark Williams, about his work on the excellent PS3 pool game, Hustle Kings.

Programming is maths and, in Hustle Kings, you’ve had to calculate friction, respect natural laws of spin and momentum, and have all these balls clashing with each other in chaotic order. Who explained the physics and to you, Stephen Hawking?

Haha, well yes, you are right: programming is maths. Unfortunately, they don’t teach you the equations for moving balls around a pool table in school. However, for most things a bit of imagination and intuition can help to combine several basic rules of maths and physics to do things that actually look quite clever.

For the really difficult stuff, we have to rely on other people’s work and, luckily for us, one guy by the name of Wayland Marlow spent years researching exactly how billiard balls react with one another and with the table. We use his research extensively in Hustle Kings to get the motion of the balls as close to real life as possible.

Are you aiming to simulate reality or to gain the most entertaining gaming experience?

I think it’s always very important to concentrate on the gaming experience first and foremost. There is no point in having a realistic game if it is no fun to play. Of course, much of the time, realism and fun complement one another.

Sometimes, you have to stray away from reality for the purposes of the game – after all, why make a game when you can do exactly the same things in real life? As an obvious example, we provide the option to use an aiming assistant in Hustle Kings, showing the path of the ball – it’s far from realistic but really helps beginners get into the game and makes it much more accessible to a wider audience.

Does Hustle Kings only appeal to cue sport enthusiasts or does it have wider appeal?

The popularity of pool and snooker has created a market for games like Hustle Kings, and I do feel that our audience is even wider than that. Hustle Kings is very ‘pick up and play’ so appeals to the most casual of gamers, and it is very accessible, allowing even novice pool players to get into the game quickly.

At the same time, the realistic physics and competitive AI provide for an enjoyable and challenging experience for the more hardcore gamers, as well as pro pool and snooker players. From the outset, we wanted to ensure we could offer something to everyone and I think we’ve achieved that.

Why did you decide to release Hustle Kings via PlayStation Store and does it have the scope to become a full Blu-ray Disc release?

We never felt there was ever any need for Hustle Kings to be a full-priced game. If you take the DLC into account, there is a huge amount on offer there: plenty of game modes, including all of the popular pool variants; snooker; trickshots; bonus games; and several high quality pool halls.

If we did a full priced game, we wouldn’t be able to offer much more, but it would cost more. The reason Hustle Kings is cheaper than a full priced game is not because there is less of a game there, but simply because we don’t have the overheads of packaging and distribution to contend with – I do strongly believe that for this reason, digital distribution is the way of the future.

Every project has a beginning and an end. How long do you think will you continue to support the community with DLC and Patches?

We have always listened to the community for feedback, and will continue to do so. We intend to support Hustle Kings with additional content, DLC, patches and so on for as long as there is demand for it. There are active Hustle Kings forums on our website, where we welcome suggestions. We have many more ideas to enhance Hustle Kings, so watch this space.

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We promised yesterday that we have something very special lined up for PlayStation Plus members and we’re now able to reveal that you will able to take part in the Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood Multiplayer Beta at the pre-testing phase from 27 September.

This means that Plus members will be able to access the beta one week before anyone else.

We’ll have more detailed information on what the Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood Multiplayer Beta includes before 27 September, so stay tuned.

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Hi everyone – I’m afraid I need to share some news from Media Molecule about the release date of LittleBigPlanet 2…

LittleBigPlanet 2 is a crazy dream, a dream to allow players to make whatever kind of game they want, but also to play though a great adventure of drama and excitement, power-ups and cinematics. But like all the most ambitious ideas, it can be a considerable challenge to turn these dreams in fun games. We’ve all been working like powered-up space ninjas and we’re almost there, but because we love what we’ve made, and we love our little sack-friends, and most of all we love all our fans out there, we couldn’t let you all get together until we knew we were giving you the best experience imaginable. Which is why we’ve taken the hard decision to delay the worldwide release of LittleBigPlanet 2, originally slated for later this year to January 2011.

We know this will come as disappointing news for all you LittleBigPlanet fans, and believe us, we are disappointed too. We are a tight-knit team and we take enormous pride in our work, so to raise the bar we’ve set with the original LittleBigPlanet, a game that has been so embraced by all, we’ve agreed to allow ourselves a bit more time to deliver the experience that our great fans and community deserve. We are truly sorry, but hope you understand that we have to build the best possible game, as it is the foundation of our community.

On the upside, we are going to find a way to give more of you a taste of LBP2 prior to launch, so stay tuned.

Thanks for your continued love and support, it won’t be long – we promise.

Lots of love from all at Mm.

All of us here are obviously disappointed that you won’t be able to get your hands on LBP 2 until January. But with LittleBigPlanet being one of the most innovative – and fun – franchises around, we do believe that it’s essential that the sequel lives up to your expectations, and to the reputation established by the award-winning first game. LBP 2 is an incredibly ambitious and exciting game; I know that waiting can seem hard, but when it launches in January I’m certain you’ll be able to see just how much further the bar has been raised.

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You’ve seen the debut trailer for BioShock Infinite. You’ve read Creative Director Ken Levine’s thoughts on expanding the award-winning formula of BioShock from the murky depths of Rapture to the soaring heights of Columbia. You’ve even bookmarked the 10 Things You Should Know About BioShock Infinite article on IrrationalGames.com.

What’s left? Watching 10 uninterrupted minutes of BioShock Infinite gameplay video, of course. Get to it!

Irrational Games’ Ken Levine was good enough to return to the PlayStation.Blog.EU and answer more questions about BioShock Infinite’s gameplay. While nitty-gritty details such as control layouts and the weapon arsenals are still over the horizon — the game isn’t due out until 2012, after all — Levine was able to shed light on a host of topics including the rollercoaster ride that is Sky-Line combat, long-range sniping in Columbia’s broad vistas, and how the mysterious companion Elizabeth makes for a potent partner.

Sid Shuman: How does BioShock Infinite build on and evolve the classic gameplay of BioShock? What were your broad goals?

Ken Levine, Creative Director, BioShock Infinite: Players had access to a lot of different tools in BioShock, but the game’s deliberately claustrophobic environments and relatively low enemy counts meant that a lot of combat encounters ended up playing out in similar ways. There were plenty of opportunities for players to make fuller use of their toolset, but it was also possible to just take the path of least resistance much of the time–which usually meant Electro-Bolt and shotgun.

In BioShock Infinite, we want the range of combat encounters to live up to the diverse toolset of weapons and powers. There are, of course, those small scale BioShock-esque interiors. But there are also the breathtaking, expansive outdoor locations you would expect in a huge floating city. Instead of just fighting a few enemies at once, you could be facing more than a dozen. Area effect weapons matter because you might face many enemies at once, and crowd control abilities matter because there are crowds to control.

SS: How do the crowds of enemies change BioShock Infinite’s combat style and pacing?

KL: There’s a famous saying: “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” That’s kind of how it was in the original BioShock. You walked down a tight, restricted corridor with Electrobolt in one hand and a shotgun in the other, and that was an effective way to deal with most of the enemies. There are obviously going to be some different weapons in BioShock Infinite, and also more weapons. You’re not going to be restricted to just the eight weapons of your radial.

One of the reasons we wanted to really expand the scale of the environment and the number of enemies was to create situations where certain tools would have clear strengths and weaknesses based upon what you were up against. There is no perfect combination or an ideal set of tools, and there’s going to be a larger variety of weapons and powers. We wanted to show that even familiar weapons like the shotgun are not always the right tool for the job. And the sniper rifle–unlike BioShock’s crossbow–actually has a specific function because of the extreme scale of our environments.

(more…)

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