Patience

Well, it seems that the LittleBigPlanet downloadable content that was supposed to be starting again tomorrow has been delayed. Whilst the new content wont now appear until next week, we have been told what to expect in the coming weeks.

On Monday 26th, there'll be free male and female Chinese New Year costumes available (picture above) on the Store. These costumes will only be available for 10 days so grab them whilst you can. In next week's Thursday update, there'll be a free Groundhog Day costume (which will be around for a week) and two God of War-themed downloads - a pack containing a bunch of stickers and the Minotaur and Medusa costumes, and seperately the Kratos costume that was previously available with pre-orders.

The following week (the 5th of February) a special Valentine's Day will go up (for 2 weeks) and will be followed the week after (the 12th) by the Ape Escape and Toro the Cat costumes that were previously only available in Japan. On the 19th, a WipEout-styled pack of costumes and stickers will be up for grabs. Oh and judging by the tease on the PlayStation Blog last week, our hunch may have been right, and some Killzone content will be around at the end of February too.

Can you wait a week?

(Source: EU Forums - more pictures there, via TheSixthAxis)

Mini Ninjas

You remember the Hitman games, right? 'Murder simulators' and all that? Well guess what the next game from the people behind it is. No ideas? "Mini Ninjas". Seriously!

I kid you not, after the fantastic Hitman: Blood Money and dismal Kane and Lynch, developers IO are taking a break from making games that teach you to slaughter people, and are instead making a game for kids. Mini Ninjas is set around the story of Hiro and Futo, who are tasked with saving the world when all the other ninjas are captured whilst investigating an evil animal army created by the Evil Samurai Warlord (not joking). Talk about last resort.

But believe it or not, there are hints of IOs other series, just like you could choose how to approach targets in Hitman; in Mini Ninjas, you can choose how to approach different puzzles. So should you encounter enemies, you could possess an animal to sneak past using Hiro, make them dance to distract them using Tsusumi's flute, or just fight them with Futo. All in all, there are six playable characters to choose from on the fly depending on situation, but there is a particular emphasis in the game on stealth, and a number of the stages require a good amount of creeping around.

And whilst the premise of the game is intriguing, the winning aspect is the art style. Bearing in mind the game is designed for kids, it features a sort of stumpy cartoony style (stumpy as in they're all quite short). On top of beautiful bright colours (like an anti-Killzone) and the shiny slices that show up on hitting enemies - obviously there is no blood - are very reminiscent of the sort of kiddie-anime you find on CITV.

Mini Ninjas looks fantastically promising, even for big kids, and the open approach to every situation is liberating. The game should be out by the end of the year.

AionGuard

Okay, so I'm actually pretty sure that the newly revealed AionGuard from Avalanche Studios (creators of the Just Cause series) will look nothing like their other works. But when they haven't even released a logo for the game yet, appropriate artwork is scarce. AionGuard sounds like a radical departure from the aforementioned series, abandoning the sunny island climes and showy skydiving, and opting instead for an fantasy world full of witches and dragons.

Avalanche has been working on the title for two years now, and is nearly ready to unveil the new game, which involves epic battles with giant monsters, massive armies, and pilotable dragons (please no motion sensing), and it even claims that AionGuard will feature action equal to some of the "finest set pieces gaming has to offer". Play follows the actual AionGuard, who have merged their bodies with awesome mechanical suits, which also grant them magical powers. They are out to recapture their world from the evil Nazurbaal, who are harvesting the world of its mystical energy source. The open-world gameplay requires you to lead the AionGuard to recapture various regions by crippling supply lines, or destroying power nodes before heading for the region's stronghold. You'll also often have to work with local tribes and revolutionary leaders to take down the base.

Avalanche will be talking more about AionGuard soon, but for more information right now, pick up the latest issue of Edge magazine (out now), which has a passive feature on the game.

Bioshock's Final Destination

I felt dirty making this image.

Last October, the fantastic first-person-shooter Bioshock finally worked its way to the PlayStation 3, completing the trifecta of gaming platforms: PS3, 360 and PC. "But wait!" I hear you cry. "What about Mac?" "Sorry, did you say Mac was a gaming platform?" I cry back. A muffled sound almost like a reluctant sigh of acceptance can be heard from your general direction. I really don't know where I'm going with this imagery.

Back on topic, Bioshock is in fact coming to Mac this year. So if you have a gaming-capable Mac (a Mac Pro or MacBook Pro basically) you will be able to enjoy this wonderful extravaganza of awesomeness sometime towards the end of this year, with the folks at Feral Interactive to thank. So about when Bioshock 2 comes out for the rest of us then. Ouch.

Let's just hope they don't make a mobile version, eh?

Weekend Roundup X: Part One

Hello all, Octopus here. Well not actually here, I'm in fact currently in Brussels, and am therefore posting from the past, and due to sleep requirements, this weeks roundup is an epic in two parts.

As most studios now begin the slowdown before Christmas, game related news has been thin, but there have been bits and bobs here and there to keep us all just about occupied, and that's not to mention the now massive pile of games to be played from the rest of this year.

The main news this week isn't even really news - the announcement that Uncharted 2 will be formally announced in just over a week at the Video Game Awards presented by Spike. As well as the first full trailer for the new game, subtitled Among Theives, there will be a new trailer for God of War III, an annoucement of EA's Fight Night Round 4, and a trailer for the recently-revealed GTA IV content. All I can say is for anyone getting a PS3 for Christmas, there's a lot to look forward to next year.

Elsewhere, Home got its first substantial content update, with some downtime to add content to the stores and trailers for Pineapple Express and Watchmen amongst other bits in the beta, and another update later in the week got people excited that the Open Beta is coming very soon. Myself and Aquatic are loving Home so far, and we will be going into some detail about our experiences during the next week.

And the rest of the week in list form!

• PS2 games for download from the store got rerumoured, and then pretty much confirmed by an ESRB rating listing.
  
• A new, quite awesome-looking, PSN game called Trine stole our hearts and attention.
• In other PSN news, Crash Commando and Savage Moon both got dated for release in December in the US, and hopefully a European release isn't far off.
• And a school for deaf children fell in love with the PSP.

Unfortunately, I must dash, early morning to get to Europe, but I'll be back on Sunday to tell you what we've been playing this week.