By Agence France-Presse

LONDON — One of the most eagerly-anticipated games in the history of the Sony PlayStation has been delayed because of concerns some of the background music may offend Muslims, the game’s developers said Monday.

LittleBigPlanet, in which gamers can customize the rag-doll protagonist Sackboy and allow it to roam through an interactive world filled with different challenges, had been hailed by video games website IGN as “nothing short of astounding” and given a review rating of 9.5 out of 10.

But its release date has been put back after one of its background music tracks, a song by Mali-born artist Toumani Diabate, was found to have included expressions from the Koran, which could be interpreted as an offense to Muslims.

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By Alex Villafania
INQUIRER.net

Traveller’s Tales must be quite happy with what they’ve been doing for the last few years. Its LEGO Star Wars adventure games have been hits among kiddie and older gamers and these successfully introduced younger people to the historic Star Wars franchise. It’s quite a tall order for a developer to create a new game, using the same game engine on a different franchise and make it successful.

Not surprisingly, it did. Traveller’s Tales (and publisher LucasArts) introduced the same gameplay to Indiana Jones starting with the original trilogy. It brings the same blocky in-game players, the same action gameplay, and the same of the old platforming and puzzle-solving adventures that the LEGO Star Wars fans enjoyed. The LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures is a sure-fire hit that even those not familiar with the Harrison Ford-starred films will have as much fun playing as finding out where the Indiana Jones history started.

As the title implies, LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures is based on the first three movies: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple of Doom, and Last Crusade. Nearly all of the most memorable scenes in the movies have been incorporated into the game but to avoid confusion, the developers made Barnett College as Indy’s “base of operations.” This is where he teaches. To start an adventure in one movie the player has to go through portals which are Indy’s office, a theater and an artifact room. Upon entering, each of the portals will first direct to a short cut scene describing that part of the movie scene. The base of operations concept in this game is similar to the LEGO Star Wars games where the players have to start in a Mos Eisley cantina, which has doors leading to certain stages in the game.
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By Agence France-Presse

SINGAPORE –Sony has no plans to cut the price of its PlayStation 3 game console, the company’s chief financial officer Nobuyuki Oneda said Friday.

“This year, our strategy is not to sell more quantity for PS3 but to concentrate on profitability,” Oneda told a forum in Singapore.

“Our plan is not to reduce the price,” he added.

His comments followed a report in the Wall Street Journal which said Microsoft plans to cut the price on a popular model of its Xbox 360 game console in an effort to boost sales in the face of stronger competition from rival Sony.

The Journal report cited people familiar with the matter who said the price cut would come as early as Sunday.

Oneda also said he expects Sony’s PS3 operations as well as the broader game segment to be profitable for the current year ending March 2009. With a report from Dow Jones Newswires.

By Alex Villafania
INQUIRER.net

LET’S see if an Iron Man video game based on the movie-comic book tie-in would save the world from the bad movie-video game curse.

Nope, it won’t.

Our faith in even the most beloved comic book franchises cannot save the poor gamer from having to suffer from the effects of playing video games based on movies. At some point you would ask, “Why do all movie-video game tie-ins suck?” Iron Man the game is a big joke. Which begs the question: why do developers and publishers bother releasing a title that they know will suck? Simple: some of us get suckered into shelling out a few bucks to satisfy our curiosity and at some point, to falsely believe that there’s a future for video game-movie tie-ins until they’re dashed the moment we chuck the game disc into our players.

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By Alex Villafania
INQUIRER.net

IT certainly is the most absurd mini-cartoon series ever created but it does a lot of good for the heart, because it’ll make you laugh pretty hard. Harvey Birdman is one of the characters in “Adult Swim,” a late-night show that is one of Cartoon Network’s most original comedy animations. It is quite a surprise that a video game was released by Capcom to emulate the show’s off-beat humor. The PlayStation 2 game Harvey Birdman, Attorney-at-Law is largely an interactive video game that takes the player to the world of Harvey Birdman, a retired 1960s superhero-turned-lawyer for a law firm called Sebben and Sebben. The entire series is very short; about four to five hours, depending on your speed of gameplay.

Speaking of which, this game doesn’t have much gameplay. Would-be players of Harvey Birdman may have to be told to watch out for its lack of the normally fast-based gameplay that is expected of a video game. There is barely enough playing around and it’s basically a TV series offshoot squeezed into a DVD game. Its interactive nature is more of pointing and clicking on items on the screen, moving forward and backward and, well, that’s basically it. However, what it lacks in gameplay it makes up for with its utter absurdity to comedic effect. The humor used in this game is just as good as the Adult Swim TV series and it will give players moments of laughter, especially with the dialogue of the characters.

Just as in the TV series, Harvey Birdman will take on court cases that range from finding out who robbed a bank to proving that Harvey’s partner, Peter Potamus (another Hanna-Barbera cartoon character way back in the 60s) is not an arsonist. You play Harvey Birdman to solve these cases. Each case will require Harvey to search for evidence or clues that he can use during the court case. Harvey can interact with witnesses (most of whom are also 60s characters) and police officers to help him out with his cases.

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