Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale gets delayed, but new characters confirmed, Vita port comes free with PS3 version

All the new info about PS All-Stars in one post. Originally planned to release at the end of October, Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale gets pushed back to November 20. The reason for the delay are the usual - Game polish and balancing. Don't go all bummed out though, a new trailer was just released during Gamescom 2012 confirming new characters joining the roster.

New Characters confirmed:

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale Main Event Trailer

Adding Ape Escape's Spike was a great choice for a game like this. Sackboy and Rachet and Clank were no brainers really. DmC's Dante, I still wish it was the old Dante look.

Have a look at the new characters in action. Sony released trailers for each new character similar to how Capcom revealed each new character from Marvel vs Capcom 3.

Spike trailer

Ratchet and Clank

DmC's Dante trailer

Sackboy trailer

The leaked information taken from the game's beta seems to be somewhat accurate at this point

Sony also mentioned that purchasing the PS3 version(either retail or download) of the game grants you the Vita version of the game for free. Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale will feature cross-platform play allowing PS3 players and Vita players to play with each other. Pretty neat feature. If they implement this to future Sony titles, players will have a good reason to get their own Vita.

[Source: PS Blog US]

Team Fortress 2 co-op coming real soon

Valve just announced a new game mode for Team Fortress 2 called Mann vs Machine. It's a 6-man co-op mode and players will be facing against waves after waves of robot enemies attempting to plant a bomb on a Mann Co. building. The co-op mode will include new maps, achievements, and objectives to complete in order to earn some loot. It's horde Team Fortress 2 style. What's great is that this mode goes live tom, Aug 15. Check the trailer for Mann vs Machine below.

Check out the official site for more information.

Only 42% of Mass Effect 3 players actually completed the game

During a Game Developers Conference in Europe Bioware shared interesting statistics regarding Mass Effect 3. Only 42% of players that started a Mass Effect 3 game actually completed it. They also revealed that more players finished Mass Effect 2 than Mas Effect 3.

Mass Effect 2 has a higher completion rate at this point with 56%. Bioware noticed a surge in the stats for the second game since a lot of players were preparing their save file for the third game.

It's been nearly five months since Mass Effect 3 was released. The game received positive reception and was the game to talk about even after a few weeks of release thanks to the game's ending. The game's community had such a negative reaction to how Bioware ending the series, to the point that the developers actually made an extended cut of the ending to give hardcore fans some closure, free of cost of course. In the end, the people that forced an extended cut from Bioware was actually 42% of the player base. But what happened to the rest?

Backlog happens. People tend to forget about games because of other releases, or simply because they just don't want to continue anymore. But I wonder though - among the 58% of players that haven't finished Mass Effect 3, did the negative reaction in the game's ending affect their decision to not finish?

I wouldn't be surprise if there was a handful. I actually know a friend who did not buy the game because fans hated the ending, and decided to wait for the extended cut promised by Bioware. And yes, he was a hardcore fan.

Mass Effect 3 is an amazing game, but the fact that your impression about a game is defined solely on the last 20 minutes of the game is a bit too much. I had my problems with the ending even after the extended cut(I think it made it worse), but it's still one of the best games I've played this year.

[Source: Eurogamer]

Assassin's Creed 3 multiplayer trailer

I was never a fan of Assassin's Creed having multiplayer, but if you can't wait to play that side of Assassin's Creed 3, here's a trailer showing the new features. Two game modes were introduced and also mentions a ranking system to compare your skills with other players all over the world. 

Assassin's Creed 3 will be out on October 30 on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. The PC version of the game will be out on November 20, a few weeks after the console release.

Weekend, what are you playing?

Again, sorry for the lack of a weekend post (and my lack of posting stuff in general lately) last weekend. Post or no post, things have happened and games were still played. So, what are you playing?

Migoy: Been streaming quite a bit this week partly due to the suspension of work and classes due to the heavy rains brought by the monsoon winds here in the Philippines. Lucky for me we didn't experience any power outage or loss of internet so video games were played. With my personal excitement for Persona 4 Arena, the new fighting game by Arc System Works (the Guilty Gear and BlazBlue guys), I decided to get a copy of Persona 4 for the PS2. Back when I just got a PS2, Persona 4 was released shortly after. I started hearing a lot of good things about it but thought that it was a series so I got Persona 3 FES first instead of 4. Since 4 has a different set of characters and a new storyline, not knowing the characters in P4A wouldn't make it as fun so me and my cousin booted up Persona 4 and are around around 13 hours deep (maybe 15 or so hours all in all if you count the game overs). Aside from that I played a bit of Street Fighter II Turbo Hyper Fighting for the SNES using an emulator so that I could use my arcade stick and man, the AI in that game is pretty tough which made winning feel a whole lot more rewarding.

Quash: Last Tuesday I was able to trade-off my Counter Strike: Global Offensive Beta on Steam's game trading forums. I already had access to the beta and for some reason I had an extra one, so I decided to get a game for it. Dead Space 2 was the only offer that caught my eye. I've always wanted to play Dead Space 2 but never bothered getting a copy, that's why when it was offered to me, I took it in a heartbeat. CS:GO beta's value is around $5-$10, and Dead Space 2 is around the same value in the trading forums, so in terms of value - I wasn't ripped off. Plus, CS:Go is coming out in a few weeks so its perfect timing to let it go.

I just started yesterday and it's worth the trade. The eerie atmosphere and the feeling of isolation is why I love Dead Space. I'm a few chapters in and  so far nothing much changed in terms of gameplay. I did try some multiplayer matches though, and right off the bat I consider it a waste of time. I'm surprised people still play this multiplayer to be honest. Will continue again later tonight because game's like this must be played at night.