Hi Everyone, this is Karl Jones (Lead Designer) and Stuart Tilley (Game Director) of WipEout 2048 for PS Vita.

The new WipEout game is our biggest and most adventurous ever, with loads of awesome new stuff for you to get your hands on come February 22nd. But almost every game has at least one cool feature that sadly finds its way to the cutting room floor, and WipEout 2048 is no exception L. Earlier this year we prototyped a new (hidden) game mode called ZOMBIE.

Now, this is WipEout, so our zombies were never going to be the sluggish, lumbering, flesh-eaters you’re familiar with. These are 1000mph steel and carbon fibre machines of menacing evil, and they want you dead…

The rules of ZOMBIE were simple enough – survive the horror for as long as possible by avoiding or taking out the Zombie ships. You start in darkness, alone on the track. Then you hear them in the distance, the digital scream of their engines filling you with dread. They start to show up on your Zombie radar, a handful at first in hot pursuit and full of ominous darkness. Then they’re on you, ramming you, destroying themselves if need be, but they’re taking you with them. You can pick up Cannons and the occasional (but very rare) Quake to defend yourself, but it’s only going to delay the inevitable – you will die. As time goes by, more and more Zombie ships appear, becoming more and more aggressive, until you are surrounded by a swarm of carbon-clad deliverers of Armageddon, and that’s before a Zombie Mother-ship even shows up…shudder!

Our prototypes showed that it was a lot of fun to flee from a horde of terrifying Zombie ships, but ZOMBIE was just one of a number of cool modes in prototype. In the final reckoning, we made the call to put Zombie mode on the back burner. That said, like a real-life Zombie, ZOMBIE mode is dead, but it’s not completely dead.

ZOMBIE mode won’t be in WipEout 2048, but we’ve still got loads of great game modes sprinkled in amongst our awesome Races. Head to Head, Speed Lap, Zone Mode, Time Trial and Combat events – every one of them with its own online leaderboard so you can fight for position against your friends and even the rest of the world.

That’s all from us for now. Don’t have nightmares.

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Happy Holidays, PlayStation Bloggers! (Or are readers considered to be “bloggies”?)

We just hit a major milestone on Journey, and are super excited to take a brief break – when we return it will be pedal to the medal to finish it up and get it out to you! Thanks to everyone who has been so supportive over the last THREE YEARS (our longest project yet!). Your support really does make all the difference, and I can’t say “thank you” enough on behalf of everyone at thatgamecompany.

Because 2011 was such a long and intense year for us, we had a bit of a mellow party to just relax, hang out, and eat some good food.

TGCers gathering around Robin’s dining room table.

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Eaten your bodyweight in cheese? Wearing your new socks? Watched enough rubbish TV? Good! Successful Christmas then! Well all thoughts turn to New Year now then heh? Well, VidZone has got a belated Christmas treat for you!!! For all of you hosting your own NYE party and wondering how to entertain all your guests, VidZone has the answer! And the answer is…

…ADVERT FREE VIDZONE!!!

That’s right! From 8pm until 2am on New Year’s Eve/Day VidZone will be completely advert free so you can party all the way through using VidZone as your entertainment!

We have geared up all the Zones to be NYE party friendly so it doesn’t matter what music you and your guests are into, we have something for everyone. The only issue you have is not having enough time to watch your whole video queue! Keep reading for all the details!
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Earlier in the year we installed a PS Eye Camera into our fridge at Media Molecule… Not, as some of you may think, as a solution to prevent lunch thieves, no, we just thought that our lives would be incomplete without a camera that took photos each time the fridge was opened and then uploaded them onto the intranet for all to see. It didn’t serve any useful purpose other than to provide us with amusement.

The first thing we noticed about having a Fridge Cam, was that people pull stupid faces when they go to get a snack and don’t know quite what they want. We believe that these faces would be pulled regardless of the presence of the camera.

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Every member of the team here would like to extend their gratitude to you for supporting and encouraging us throughout a very eventful year. During the course of developing MotorStorm Apocalypse (and the many updates and DLC goodies that have followed), and since our unveiling of MotorStorm RC, your ongoing enthusiasm has really kept us going. As a thank you, there’s a new MotorStorm Apocalypse livery on PlayStation Store right now, and our artists have created this card for you:

We love this time of year. There are tons of great games out and there are always high hopes for a White Christmas, because few things are as exciting to drive on as freshly fallen snow. Maybe we’ll get to take the truck out for a spin again…

We’re also looking forward to 2012, to showing you more of MotorStorm RC and creating exciting new things. We’re hiring too, so if you’d like to be a part of the family (and you’re particularly highly skilled in C++ programming) then please head over to www.playstationjobs.com

Enjoy your holidays! We hope to see you on the new mirrored tracks playlist in MotorStorm Apocalypse (look out for us in the black carbon ‘Evolution’ liveries)! All the best for 2012 and keep in touch – we love hearing from you!

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