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Hotline Miami dials up PS4's number, makes plans for August 19
Hotline Miami will make its next generation debut when it launches for PS4 on August 19. The game first arrived in October 2012 for PC before taking its first trip to PS3 and Vita in June 2013. According to a tweet from the game's official Twitter account, players will be able to "beat people to death by shaking the gamepad" with the sounds of your executions emanating from the controller's speaker, which just seems pleasant. Players will also have the option to use the DualShock 4's touch pad to look around and lock on to enemies. We rather enjoyed Hotline Miami, and found the action in the game to be gruesome and "well-executed" in our review. Other players seemed to enjoy the game as well, enough for developer Dennaton Games to craft a sequel in Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, which is due to launch in Q3 2014. Hotline Miami will feature Cross-Buy support, so those with any other PSN version of the game will receive the PS4 game for free. In addition to the release date, Devolver Digital also offered a new gameplay trailer for the game's PS4 version. [Image: Devolver Digital]
Drink in Bloodrayne Betrayal on PC, out now on Steam
Et tu, Bloodrayne Betrayal? WayForward's campy revival is available now on Steam, any you can pick up the vampiric 2D hack-and-slash for $10 in North America, or £7/10 euros in lands closer to Transylvania. The PC port was handled by Abstraction Games, who you might recognize from the PC port of Double Dragon Neon and the PS3 and Vita ports of Hotline Miami. Our review rained praise on the PS3 and Xbox 360 release of Bloodrayne Betrayal, with Joystiq undead JC Fletcher giving the game four and a half stars, mostly because it's a rollicking good time: "You can kick a vampire into a toxic sludge jump onto his floating body, and then use a flamethrower-like weapon as a jet to propel yourself around. Fun. Occasionally (I'd say in exactly two places) the enjoyment is overwhelmed by difficulty, but those spots can't take away the goodwill I have for the game as a whole. And I begrudgingly respect the design of those spots, after having died around 50 times trying to get through them." [Image: Midnight City]
Chaotic 2D shooter Gunslugs hits PlayStation Vita this month
Pascal Bestebroer, also known as indie developer Orangepixel, is bringing Gunslugs to the PS Vita later this month. Abstraction Games will help out with the Vita port. Gunslugs is a chaotic 2D shooter with randomly generated levels. Bestebroer says difficulty is emphasized in Gunslugs and other games from his indie outfit. "Not brutal, and always fair," Bestebroer wrote on the PlayStation Blog, "but they are really hard." There are six worlds, not counting the bonus worlds, to explore in Gunslugs. Each world is broken into two levels, along with a boss fight at the end. Mission objectives and leaderboards round out the content. We interviewed Bestebroer early last year when he was working on the first version of Gunslugs. He described the game as "that game you played when you were a kid, pretending that your toy figurines were fighting a big war against evil, blowing everything up with a huge amount of fun." [Image: Orangepixel]
Double Dragon Neon cowabungas onto Steam today with online co-op
Tubular news, dudes and dudettes: Double Dragon Neon is out later today on Steam for Windows PCs, and it's got a righteous new addition: online co-op. It comes courtesy of the bodacious bods at Abstraction Games, while the original flashback beat-em-up was developed by Ducktales Remastered studio WayForward. When it swaggered onto XBLA and PSN in 2012, Dave 'To The Max' Hinkle gave Double Dragon Neon a radical four-and-a-half-stars, calling it, "yet another jewel in WayForward's crown, unmistakably a Double Dragon game but with just the right amount of new flavor to make it something distinct, all wrapped in a brilliant '80s motif." If that all sounds most outstanding to you, it's $10/£7/9 euros to join the partay. [Image: WayForward/Abstraction Games]
Mighty No. 9 adds Vita and 3DS to stretch goals
Mighty No. 9 will head to 3DS and PlayStation Vita if its Kickstarter project reaches $3.5 million, a project update revealed today. Comcept has raised over $2.6 million in its crowdfunding campaign so far, which is scheduled to end on Tuesday, October 1. Meanwhile, the campaign's previously announced $3.3 million goal would bring the game to PS4 and Xbox One, and the game will already come to PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii U thanks to reaching its $2.2 million goal. Mighty No. 9 is a 2D side-scrolling platformer from Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune. The retro-inspired Mega Man spiritual successor includes a Boss Rush mode and will seek a balance between old-school difficulty and fair, modern gameplay. Comcept noted that, providing the $3.5 million stretch goal is met, Abstraction Games will be in charge of the Mighty No. 9 port to handheld systems, the same developer that brought Hotline Miami to PS3 and Vita.
Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition gets some on PS Vita
Devolver Digital has revealed a port of Duke Nukem 3D, coming to PlayStation Vita. Dubbed Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition, this latest iteration of the classic shooter was revealed in a tweet earlier today. It's likely this is a PS Vita port of the same Megaton Edition offered on Steam, which includes three additional DLC packs on top of the core game, but Devolver isn't saying for the time being. No other information is available at this time, though the tweet implies this port is being handled by Abstraction Games. This is the same studio that handled the PS VIta port of Hotline Miami.
Hotline Miami coming to PS Vita 'probably next week'
A PlayStation Vita port of Dennaton and Devolver Digital's brutally violent action game Hotline Miami will hit the PlayStation Network "probably next week," according to a recent tweet from the game's official Twitter account. Cross-buy PlayStation 3 and PS Vita versions of Hotline Miami were announced back in February. While the tweet in question addressed a portable version of Hotline Miami specifically, it's likely that the PS3 edition will launch either alongside the release of the PS Vita version or shortly afterward. At E3, Joystiq saw a demo for the sequel, Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, and spoke with Dennaton co-founder Denis Wedin. Wrong Number is due out this year for PC platforms.
Hotline Miami brings cross-buy beats to PS3, Vita this spring
Taste the happy, Vita and PS3 owners, because the raw violence-o-rama that is Hotline Miami is coming to the PlayStation platforms this spring as a cross-buy game. That means a single purchase entitles you to versions on both platforms.The ports are being developed by Abstraction Games under the guidance of original developer Dennaton Games. You might recognize Abstraction's name from previous PSP and DSiWare conversions of Angry Birds and Cut the Rope respectively, as well as WiiWare puzzler Potpourrii (and if you do, kudos to you).Publisher Devolver Digital also revealed the 80s-infused ultraviolence of Hotline Miami is proving a hit on PC, with 300,000 sales to date.
USK rates Hole in the Wall for Kinect, Cut the Rope for DSiWare
A few hacks have hinted at it, a few minigames in collections like Carnival Games: Monkey See, Monkey Do have touched on it -- now it seems Microsoft is fully cashing in on the very reason for the Kinect's existence: Hole in the Wall. The game, in which players contort their body in an attempt to fit through the titular cavity, was recently rated by the German USK ratings board. No details about the title were included in the rating, other than the fact Microsoft will handle publishing duties. Another, equally exciting new entry on the USK ratings site is a DSiWare listing for Chillingo's infinitely addicting puzzle game, Cut the Rope. Again, there are few details, but a tease posted on the Facebook page of indie developer Abstraction Games (which brought Angry Birds to PSP earlier this year) seems to indicate they'll be in charge of porting the title. We'll let you know when we hear more about these two projects!
VC Friday: ... Yay?
Fans of nocturnal bowling and derivative puzzle games are well-served in this week's Wii Shop PAL update. One month after Midnight Pool arrived on WiiWare and shook the gaming universe to its very foundations, development stable-mate Midnight Bowling has arrived. Oh, and it's rubbish.It's joined by revolving Zuma/Bejeweled/Magnetica Twist imitator Potpourrii, which, ironically, stinks. They're 800 Points apiece, and you can see footage of both if you go past the break. We will be amazed if more than nine people accept that invitation. Midnight Bowling -- WiiWare -- 800 Nintendo Points Potpourrii -- WiiWare -- 800 Nintendo Points Roll on next Friday, frankly.
Potpourrii to win the Wii pun arms race
Studio Walljump may have just announced a WiiWare puzzler with "ii" in the title, but Abstraction Games is totally going to beat them to WiiWare with their own Wii-pun-named puzzle game, Potpourrii. Potpourrii appears to be a sort of rotating Bust a Move (a new genre that we are officially naming "Gyruss-t a Move"), but with the very important addition of a crowd of garden gnomes in the periphery of the screen.According to a statement given to IGN by Abstraction, Potpourrii is set to launch this Monday, September 15. Of course, this is assuming that Nintendo allows it. Hey, pun or not, we happen to like puzzle games, and we like paying small amounts for them, so bring the WiiWare puzzlers on.
