Features// SPOnG's Review of the Year 2010: June

Sony had an announcement trump card of its own - Valve’s CEO, Gabe Newell, took to the PlayStation stage to formally announce the development of Portal 2 on PS3 (E3: Gabe Newell: Thanks for Not Punching Me in the Face Sony, 15th June).

Not only that, but it was revealed that the version on Sony’s console would be able to take advantage of Steamworks for free updates and patches at will - something the Xbox 360 version will not be able to achieve. As a result, even cross-compatibility online play between PS3 and PC players is possible (Valve Working On Portal 2 Cross-Compatibility For PS3, 18th June).

A good thing this was made public, because just a couple of weeks before E3 Valve had teased that it wasn’t going to show anything Portal 2 related at all (‘Surprise’ Replaces Portal 2 at E3, 2nd June), instead opting for another kind of announcement. The company then sent a rather humourless message to press to say that even this event was cancelled (E3 2010: Valve Saga - Surprise Event Cancelled, 11th June). These were some of our most popular stories for the month, making Portal 2 more hotly anticipated than we thought was possible.

The rest of our more popular stories in June were Sony related, again - if it wasn’t former SCEE MD David Reeves openly talking about how the PSP Go is struggling while confirming the PSP 2’s existence at the same time (Capcom Chief: Confirms PSP2 Derides PSP Go, 18th June), it was SCEA president Jack Tretton bigging up the future of 3D gaming and how important it is for gamers (Jack Tretton: 3D ‘Critical for PS3 Owners,’ 11th June).

Add to that the showcases of Killzone 3, PlayStation Move, LittleBigPlanet 2, Twisted Metal and the moving gamer speech by marketing actor Kevin Butler, and you had a good reason to keep an eye on Sony this month.

As you would expect, there were plenty of games to see at E3, and even more to look at during the press events that took place around it. We had a good, eye-popping look at Motorstorm Apocalypse (sans 3D unfortunately), and spoke to Evolution Studios’ Paul Rustchynsky; our men in LA playtested the new Mortal Kombat, Rage and Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days; and an Activision press day resulted in previews of DJ Hero 2, True Crime, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock and Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions.

[b][u]Finally…[/u][/b]

Microsoft was gearing for a AAA title launch for the Summer as well - the sequel to Realtime Worlds’ Crackdown, developed by Ruffian Games. A demo was released to generate interest, allowing gamers a time limited offering of most of Pacific City’s features.

Some clever dicks managed to bust that time limit wide open, getting an almost free game of Crackdown 2 in the process. (Crackdown 2 Demo Suffers Infinite Time Glitch, 23rd June). Gameplay boundaries were put in place to stop the entire game from being leaked though, which is a fine bit of forethought on Microsoft’s part. But still, pretty surprising stuff.