Remember gamescom? I know, it feels like it was years ago now. We have a special interview that we shot at the show with none other than the head of Kojima Productions, Hideo Kojima himself.

We’ve been itching to get this up for you and, after a few complications, it’s ready for you to have a peek at. Kojima-san talks to us in depth about the co-op features in his upcoming Metal Gear Solid PSP sequel, Peace Walker. He also discusses what he’d like to do next and confirms that a sequel to a certain beloved franchise is more a case of “when”, not “if”. We’ll let you find out for yourselves which it is in the video below.

Since this video was shot I’ve had my hands on the TGS demo of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and can confirm that what I’ve seen looks and plays brilliantly. The game’s 2010 release cannot come soon enough.

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Here’s the last in our gamescom video interview series, this time taking a look at Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time with Greg Phillips, that game’s producer. It seems like so long ago, I can barely remember what we spoke about, so let’s have a little look.

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Just last week, one of our Senior Character Artists, Hanno, and I hopped on a plane to head over to Cologne, Germany, to work at Europe’s biggest videogames show, gamescom. It turns out that we absolutely had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.

This was the first European show for Hanno and myself, as we had never been to the Leipzig Games Convention in the previous years. We weren’t prepared at all on how huge gamescom was – not only in importance, but in sheer physical size. There were four different halls at the Koelnmesse where games were being shown and EACH hall was about the same size of an airplane hangar. The PlayStation booth was probably one of the biggest booths we’ve ever seen and was split into four main sections representing racing games, family games, social entertainment and an 18+ area.

We were looking forward to going to Germany since we were hand-carrying over something really special with us – a fresh set of Blu-ray disks that would allow anyone at gamescom to have the first hands-on gameplay ever with the single player campaign of UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves! After we got all of our stations setup, we took some photos of the booth and over the next two days had the chance to take even more photos and video to give you an idea of what it was like for us down on the show floor.

We kicked off the week attending the PlayStation press conference, which was filled to capacity and then some, where SCEE President Andrew House introduced a brand new trailer for UNCHARTED 2 which we put together just for gamescom. Then, Hanno and I spent the first two days of the show with a very full slate of back to back interviews with European press and some US press. You can read some of the interviews here.

We also set aside some time for behind-closed-doors meetings with press, which we used to demo a brand new area of the game where Nathan Drake and a Tibetan companion, Tenzin, must work together to explore and overcome a variety of obstacles inside a frozen cave deep in the Himalayan mountains. We caught a few articles about these demos here.

The rest of the days, gamescom was open to the public and hundreds of thousands of people attended to check out all the games being shown. As you can see from the gamescom Flickr page, there were TONS of attendees throughout the public days.

Over the weekend, we were extremely proud to learn that we were awarded the gamescom 2009 Award for Best Console Game! There was some tough competition at the show by some excellent games coming out this year and early next year, so winning this award means a lot to us at Naughty Dog.

Of course, this won’t be the only time we’ll be giving our fans a chance to get hands-on time with our single-player campaign. First, PlayStation Canada is bringing UNCHARTED 2 to the Fan Expo in Toronto, Canada, this weekend and those in attendance will get the chance to get some hands-on time with our game. Then, the following weekend, PlayStation and Naughty Dog will be at the Penny Arcade Expo 2009 in Seattle and we’ll be bringing the single-player campaign code with us as well!

We hope to see you at either show!

Rate: (Average: 4.53 out of 5)

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I’m a complete sucker for cue-sports. In fact, would anyone like to guess what’s in my PS3 right now? No word of a lie, it’s Jimmy White’s Cueball 2 for the PSone. Therefore, Hustle Kings has been on my radar for some time and I jumped at the chance to interview the Art Director.

One thing I forgot to ask about was the Hustle Mode (n00b). You win credits for winning racks and pulling off extravagant shots, then you can bet them online. Hustle Kings even supports video chat, via the PlayStation Eye. Basically, I love this game!

For more information check out PlayStation.com

Rate: (Average: 4.18 out of 5)

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I’ve always wanted to write a videogame – it’s on my list of things to do before I lose interest in writing videogames. Therefore, I look forward to interviews with the Heavy Rain writer and director David Cage and I’m always keen to listen to his storytelling philosophies. I managed to catch up with him outside the showfloor at gamescom, away from the gunfire and heavy metal that is still ringing in my ears.

I didn’t get to play the new scene in the end, partly because I acted like a headless chicken and partly because I want to take in the whole game in one sitting when I get hold of a copy, but it looks stunning. If you want to check it out for yourselves, head on over to US PlayStation.Blog to see David Cage walk you through the new level.

Rate: (Average: 4.21 out of 5)

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