Sony's NGP Lineup: Uncharted, WipEout, Meh

Greg Tito

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Sep 29, 2005
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Sony's NGP Lineup: Uncharted, WipEout, Meh

Sony's new handheld will have games for its launch with popular names in the titles.

Sony is sticking to its guns regarding the name of its newest handheld, still calling it Vita as has been rumored recently [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/107321-Sony-Finally-Confirms-New-PSP]. That doesn't mean they don't have a wonderful lineup of marquee games to shore up sales of the new platform. Top of the list is Uncharted: Golden Abyss which looks like it wants to recreate the gameplay of the original games by Naughty Dog. Second up is WipEout 2048 which is a reboot of the science-fiction racing series. After that, there's a steep dropoff in name recognition in the NGP lineup but there might be a hidden gem in Reality Fighters.

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Golden Abyss, made by the team behind Resistance: Retribution, looks pretty slick and true to the action of Uncharted. "We spent six months working on story ideas [with Naughty Dog] because story is so important to the franchise," John Garvin the Creative Director at Bend Studio. The game will be a standalone story set before the events of the Uncharted series, but the plot does offer some clues as to the events of the upcoming third installment on the PS3 Drake's Fortune.

I've usually gotten my sci-fi racing fix from the F-Zero brand, but WipEout was quite a looker on the original PlayStation back in 1995. WipEOut 2048 is set 37 years from now at the birth of anti-grav racing. "We're setting the races through the heart of a city, so we've got our interpretation of what New York City will look like 40 years from now," said designer Graeme Ankers.

A future New York City? What a fascinating and fresh concept! Cynicism aside, WipEOut 2048 does actually looks pretty fun.

The rest of the titles try to show off the NGP's features which appear to ape Nintendo's 3DS, without the 3D. Little Deviants looks like a kid-friendly way to show off the NGP's "rear touch pad, touch screen, the motion sensor, front and rear cameras, augmented reality and microphone."

As part of that augmented reality comes a game called Reality Fighters which will let you take pictures of people, import them into the game and fight with them in settings like your office.

Watch out [user]Steve Butts[/user], I'm coming for you with my dragon style fighting pose!

Rounding out the launch lineup is the PSN shmup Super Stardust Delta, pool sim Hustle Kings, Everybody's Golf, and a innovative music game-sidescroller mashup with the working title Sound Shapes.

Despite this infodump from Sony, there's still no word on NGP's release window or what the hell the Vita is.

Source: EU PlayStation Blog [http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2011/06/02/uncharted-golden-abyss-wipeout-2048-little-deviants-and-more-ngp-games-officially-unveiled/]

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manythings

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Nov 7, 2009
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So anyone want to place a bet on how long before the NGP is hacked to create porn with real people being snapped and imported into the reality fighters style tech? I'm going with less than a month.
 

FallenTraveler

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Jun 11, 2010
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I think you meant to say "upcoming third installment on the PS3 Drakes DECEPTION" but other than that... yeah, I am pumped for this!
 

xyrafhoan

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Jan 11, 2010
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Reality Fighters sound an awful lot like a game that already exists on the DSi shop that was given out for free about a year ago (and now only costs 200 points). You could take a picture of your face and stick it on a fighter, and also do your own shouts and grunts. Reality Fighters probably has more to the gameplay than simple punches and kicks, but that's some major deja vu.
 

mjc0961

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Nov 30, 2009
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Greg Tito said:
Golden Abyss, made by the team behind Resistance: Retribution, looks pretty slick and true to the action of Uncharted. "We spent six months working on story ideas [with Naughty Dog] because story is so important to the franchise," John Garvin the Creative Director at Bend Studio.
It is? That's funny. I just assumed that Naughty Dog wasn't taking the Uncharted stories seriously when Uncharted 2's story was just Uncharted 1's story all over again, but with different nouns. It made me think they just have an Uncharted plot ad-lib where they went around the office filling in the various blanks and using what they came up with as the plot. So you know, same overall plot each time, but different nouns (like Marco Polo instead of Francis Drake).

Hopefully Uncharted 3 will not follow the same pattern, but if it does, I will never be able to take anyone who thinks the Uncharted series has good stories seriously ever again.
 

Truly-A-Lie

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Nov 14, 2009
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Sounds like someone didn't play Super Stardust HD. Having a proper portable Stardust game after the pretty disappointing PSP version is one of the biggest draws NGP's had for me so far and is anything but a "meh" entry to the launch lineup.
 

Catchy Slogan

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Jun 17, 2009
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mjc0961 said:
Greg Tito said:
Golden Abyss, made by the team behind Resistance: Retribution, looks pretty slick and true to the action of Uncharted. "We spent six months working on story ideas [with Naughty Dog] because story is so important to the franchise," John Garvin the Creative Director at Bend Studio.
It is? That's funny. I just assumed that Naughty Dog wasn't taking the Uncharted stories seriously when Uncharted 2's story was just Uncharted 1's story all over again, but with different nouns. It made me think they just have an Uncharted plot ad-lib where they went around the office filling in the various blanks and using what they came up with as the plot. So you know, same general idea, but different nouns.

Hopefully Uncharted 3 will not follow the same pattern, but if it does, I will never be able to take anyone who thinks the Uncharted series has good stories seriously ever again.
People say it has good stories? I always just asumed that it was super cliche in an Indiana Jones way, and that was the reason it's so good/ fun.
 

vrbtny

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Sep 16, 2009
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manythings said:
So anyone want to place a bet on how long before the NGP is hacked to create porn with real people being snapped and imported into the reality fighters style tech? I'm going with less than a month.
Less than a week....
 

Cowabungaa

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Feb 10, 2008
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...

Those are the graphics...of a handheld console.

But alas:

HankMan said:
I'm still Not Gunna Purchase it.
Neither will I. Sorry Sony, I prefer reading books nowadays in situations where handhelds are usually used.
 

ChromeAlchemist

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Aug 21, 2008
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There's nothing there that I want to be honest, but I guess that's because I haven't played Uncharted yet (I'll get a PS3 someday because I've been wanting to play that, looks really good) and I pretty much only play F-Zero in terms of racers as well but...yeah.

Raw power on a handheld doesn't do it for me. That's why the PSP never did it for me either. I need a stronger lineup than that Broseph.
 

mireko

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Sep 23, 2010
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Yes yes, Sony. Now tell us about Gravity Daze! Don't make me post this in every NGP thread!

[sub]Wipeout was always better than F-Zero. I'm sorry, them's the facts.[/sub]
 

yanipheonu

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Jan 27, 2010
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Ok, I'm going to paraphrase from the Joystiq podcast while adding my own stuff.

That looks amazing. Don't get me wrong, that's pretty cool. Not a big Sony guy so I'll be waiting on this, but I'll probably pick one up one day.
But I'm going to put my critic glasses now.

So, you made a portable PS3. I'm glad you did that. WHY DID YOU DO THAT? Did we learn nothing?

My worry is dev costs. We now have to pay costs much closer to console games than before, and only so many companies will do that. So we'll have some lookers for sure, but expensive ones, and many devs may cheap out on graphics and gameplay to justify being on a portable rather than a console.

And what about PSP devs? Not all of them will be able to make HD graphics. They may well move over to the 3DS or even iOS just to stay relevant and keep costs down.

There's a reason the 3DS is not as powerful, it's easier and cheaper to dev for. That's the reason the DS was so weak and had such a huge lineup.

That said, of course, the PSP did eventually come into it's own, rather impressively I may add. And Sony can do things to make development easier and cheaper, been hearing some rumors to that affect, so if they can pull that off, they might jsut have a winner. Til then, I'll be waiting on E3
 

Mark Davison

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Feb 14, 2010
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thats what i love about this site, the professional reporting and interesting news stories. no wait. Seriously. This has to be one of the worst written posts... almost enough to stop me coming back here in one stop. Okay, im not a DS guy, but have a PS3, Wii and 360 and generally consider myself objective - the 3DS has such a terrible launch line up - yet all the line ups were talking about the good games. Sonys line isnt eather shattering - but it deserves better than a "meh" Wipeout,. Uncharted, Super stardust - all great games.

Terrible journalism...