The Despair-Ridden Story of Danganronpa Another Episode on PS Vita

Set between Trigger Happy Havoc and Goodbye Despair, Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls on PS Vita introduces a number of new faces while bringing back a few familiar ones.

With the horrors from The Biggest, Most Awful, Most Tragic Event in Human History that surrounded Hope’s Peak Academy still overshadowing mankind, the war of despair rages on. Upon discovering Komaru, one of the playable heroines of Danganronpa Another Episode, Byakuya of Future Foundation returns from the first Danganronpa game to save her from the attacking Monokumas. Soon after equipping her with a Hacking Gun to destroy the Monokumas, she is caught by the Warriors of Hope, a band of children who rule over Towa City.

At first, the children seem innocent, mirroring the Ultimate students that Hope’s Peak Academy strives for to become the ray of hope for society. Each of them specializing in their specific strength, the Warriors of Hope identify themselves with various Dragon Quest job classes.

Masaru Daimon starts off, the Li’l Ultimate P.E. and the hero of the Warriors of Hope, who claims to be the leader and is followed by Nagisa Shingetsu, the Li’l Ultimate Social Studies and the sage of the Warriors of Hope. Next introduced is Jataro Kemuri, Li’l Ultimate Art as the priest, and Kotoko Utsugi, the fighter of the Warriors of Hope and Li’l Ultimate Drama. And last but not least, the true leader of the Warriors of Hope and Li’l Ultimate Homeroom, Monaca, who acts as the mage in their band of personas.

The Warriors of Hope are carrying out a revolution against adults in Towa City — they blame the adults for the tragedy and want to eliminate adults to build a utopia for children and become a beacon of hope for all kids. After defending the adults and upsetting Monaca, Komaru is deemed to be one of the “Demons,” which spurs a game called Demon Hunting — a super fun game where the Warriors of Hope fight to see who takes down the demon first.

Guided by Kurokuma, the stylish, Monokuma-like advisor to the Warriors of Hope, the hunt begins. Soon after, Komaru is joined by Toko, a.k.a. Genocide Jack, the other playable heroine, and introduced to Shirokuma and the Resistance who will help you traverse through Towa City to survive. Of course, this heavy story can’t be complete without the humor that only Danganronpa can provide; Komaru’s ordinary girl responses in contrast to Toko’s eccentric thoughts and fantasies give way to lighthearted banter despite running for their lives.

And so, the rest is up to you — how will you escape? Will you survive the attacks by the Warriors of Hope and escape the hordes of Monokumas? Will you find hope or will you fall into the ultimate despair that lies beyond it?

See for yourself when Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls launches on September 1st in North America! And be sure to check out the previous Danganronpa games, Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc and Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair to stave off your thirst for more despair!

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Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! Coming to PS4

Hey y’all! I’m proud to introduce Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!!, a massive sequel to the surprise hit on PC. It will be making its console debut on PS4! Woo!

Way back in the PSone days, I’d always pick up a copy of the official PlayStation magazine for the included demo discs. Every now and then they’d have a special “import section” that had untranslated demos of games from Japan that would likely never make their way to the states.

One of these was a game called Ore no Ryouri, a twin stick cooking game that had you pouring beers and making foods for customers. It was just a small, timed demo, but it had me hooked.

Well after playing it, the idea of making an insane cooking game kept gnawing away at me. I got into making small games and pursued my passion for game development, but it wasn’t until making Cook, Serve, Delicious! that it all clicked together. Finally, my love of food and intense gameplay mechanics were merged into one.

Still, I didn’t know if that would play to the gaming audience, given that a large majority of cooking games were of the simple, casual variety, and Cook, Serve, Delicious! was very much the opposite of that. In fact it didn’t really take off until Ryan Davis of Giantbomb picked it up for a Quick Look video. Since then, the game has inspired hundreds of Let’s Play videos and streams for a cumulative total of more than six million views, and has grossed nearly a million across PC and mobile.

Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! has you rebuilding your own restaurant in a massive skyscraper, earning money by cooking and serving customers delicious food, and building up your restaurant’s reputation from a zero star dilapidated café to a five star world famous restaurant.

Along the way you’ll jump into other restaurants in the tower for shift work, star in the biggest reality cooking show ever, participate in tournaments all over the world, uncover mysterious ingredients, and tons, tons more. The breakneck pace and gameplay has been a staple of the game, and this game will be even faster and more challenging than ever.

This is a huge, massive sequel to the first game. Everything is new in this game, from the art by Camille Kuo, to the music by Jonathan Geer, to the large amount of game content, with more than 180 foods, 1,000+ recipes, tons of unlockables and events, and dozens of hours of gameplay. For those who have played the first game, you can look forward to even better gameplay mechanics with all new strategies and components, running at 1080p and 60 frames per second.

I can’t wait to launch the game in 2016! Thanks, and if you have any questions I’ll be sure to answer them below. Until then, keep cooking deliciously!

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Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture: Orchestrating the End of the World

The end of the world is nearly upon us. Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture now has a release date of August 11th and the team is working exceptionally hard on the final few touches to ensure that the game is as perfect as it can be. As you read this I’m in L.A. with our brilliant sound designer Adam Hay and the wonderful Sony sound and music team doing the final mix of the game. I can’t believe that this time has finally come- it’s scary and exciting in equal measures because it means that there are no more changes: no more “can we just try”, no “how about if we”, no “I think we should” – just the knowledge that for better or worse, this is how the game will sound on release. *sobs into gin-soaked pillow*

As well as being The Chinese Room composer I’m also joint studio head, and working on this game has been a blast. Of course there have also been times when I would have chewed my own arm off to leave the development, but that’s how it goes on long projects! I know this game so well – I know every rock, every VO, every blade of grass. This level of immersion in the game world has enabled me to write a score that is a love letter to the game and the characters within it. Every main character has their own distinct musical theme (think Peter and the Wolf but for the apocalypse) and the music helps to gently guide you round the world as well as providing the emotional core of the experience.

All we want as artists I think is to keep getting better; we strive for the thing that is always out of reach. The music for Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture was a real challenge – being set in the ’80s there was perhaps an expectation that I’d write a synth-driven retrotastic score. I tried that and when we put it in the game it simply didn’t work. The world that the team has created is so timeless and it just felt wrong to impose a heavy-handed pastiche onto the environment. So I decided to create what I hope is timeless music; music for an England that only ever existed in the imagination.

Being afforded the opportunity to write beautiful music for this incomparably beautiful game has been a true honour. To record at the world-famous AIR Studios was a career defining moment for me. As I stood watching and listening to the assembled group of phenomenally talented musicians and singers I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. I was lucky enough to have this very special time documented by Sony and you can watch the video on this page to get a taste of the music of Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture and an insight into how it was created. The end result is — I hope — rural, dream-like, lyrical, passionate, poetic and most of all an encapsulation of that this game is all about: a celebration of what it is to be human.

Come and visit us at GoneToTheRapture.com.

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Watch the Uncharted 4 Extended E3 Demo

Our E3 press conference demo literally left Drake hanging and with good cause. We wanted to give attendees of E3 a treat and show them if Sully and Drake ever caught up to Nathan’s brother, Sam, in time. The reaction was pretty fantastic. Now, for everyone not able to see it at the show, you can watch it live on Twitch right here.

Watch live video from NaughtyDog on www.twitch.tv

Get ready for a wild ride as Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End will be careening into your living room in 2016.

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Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions Evolved Hits PS Vita July 7th

Hi all! I’m really excited to give you a little insight into our experience bringing Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions Evolved to PS Vita. We’re big fans of the Vita here at Lucid, and we were always very keen to bring the Geometry Wars series to it. The pin-sharp screen coupled with the twin sticks are a perfect fit for the game, so we were really happy to go ahead with the conversion.

We wanted Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions Evolved to be the same fully featured experience it is on PS4 and PS3 — capturing all of the varied gameplay and enemies that can be encountered across its 100+ single-player levels and multiplayer modes.

Among the technical challenges we faced, we had to ensure that we could hold a steady 60 FPS (frames per second) even when there were hordes of enemies chasing you down. The Vita’s graphical architecture is quite advanced for a handheld platform, but it is not at the same level as PS4, so our graphics team looked at how we could achieve comparable visual fidelity between the two versions while still keeping the game silky smooth.

One advantage is that the Vita’s display is lower than a 1080p TV, so we did not need to flood the game with as many pixels every frame. This instantly helped to free up GPU (graphics processor unit) time, along with a little CPU (central processing unit) time.

However the complex shaders and lighting wizardry that was used to define the vibrant Geometry Wars world on PS4 was a bit too much for its sibling to cope with, so we had to deploy some developer tricks to achieve similar results, and after a few months, we had something that not only looked spot-on, but also maintained that all-important framerate.

Whilst this graphical work was happening, the gameplay guys worked on the actual playability of the game on Vita. Geometry Wars is all about the way in which the ship moves and responds to the player’s input, so we checked out the way in which the dead zones can affect the movement of the craft and the way it responds. The process is a little different for every platform, but it’s crucial for ensuring that the game always feels just right on each and every device available.

After working through the single-player component, we then concentrated on multiplayer. Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions Evolved on Vita still has 8-player competitive mode of the console versions. We used Activision’s Demonware service for this; it’s cross-platform, which essentially allowed us to carry a lot of the same code between various versions of the game.

Things were going well until we got to local cooperative multiplayer… On PS4, you need additional controllers to play Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions Evolved with a partner. Obviously, there’s no way to achieve that on PS Vita, so we were initially a little stumped. The easy option would have been to take the feature out altogether, but we sat around and thought about other possibilities.

In the end, we came with a unique two-player co-op format in which players sit opposite one another and play the game simultaneously on the same screen. Player 1 uses the D-Pad to move and the nearest analog stick for shooting, while Player 2 uses the other analog stick for moving with the face buttons to shoot. This combination might seem strange at first, but it’s actually easy to pick up, so you can sit together with your buddy / partner / enemy on the sofa and share a little light Vita relief.

I hope this post has shed some interesting light on how we’re bringing Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions Evolved to PS Vita. We are really pleased with the results and cannot wait for you to experience the game for yourselves. It’s also really exciting to announce that it will be free to all PlayStation Plus subscribers as part of July’s Instant Game Collection starting next week, so we hope to see you all posting some astronomically high scores on the leaderboards soon!

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PlayStation Underground: Shu Plays Bloodborne

Welcome back to PlayStation Underground, our online show about video games! Today, we are pleased to host and honored to have our special guest, the President of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida!

Before we were all swept away by the hustle and bustle of E3, Shu stopped by to showcase his personal obsession with Bloodborne by braving a high-level Chalice Dungeon with absolutely no fear (but maybe a little bit of caution). Shu also shares his heartfelt appreciation for the project, his history with FromSoftware, and his favorite weapons to employ against flaming hell beasts. He got a Platinum Trophy on this game, people!

My special thanks to Shu for stopping by to share his own Bloodborne character and face crushing defeat on camera…

Let me know what you think in the comments, and remember that we’ll be back soon with more Underground in the weeks to come. Enjoy the show.

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PS Plus: Free Games for July 2015

Prepare yourselves for a free games lineup the likes of which you’ve (probably) never seen! We’ve got rocket-powered cars, stealthy goblins, science cats,and even a little dab of arthouse wonder for good measure. All free starting next week for PS Plus members.

This month’s lineup includes four games playable on PS4, starting with the multiplayer mayhem of Rocket League. Use insane stunts and teamwork to score points in this fast-paced arcade game that even features a wholesome little cameo from Sweet Tooth, our favorite demonic ice cream truck.

Also included is the fantasy stealth game Styx: Master of Shadows, and the head-scratching puzzles of Mousecraft. And if you’re still not satisfied, why not embark upon an adventure that spans nine lifetimes in the surreal story of Entwined?

Rounding out the lineup is Rain on PS3 and Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions Evolved on PS Vita. All these games will be free for PS Plus members starting on July 7th. If you want to see these games in motion, hit that play button below.

July’s PlayStation Plus Lineup

Rocket League PS4	Styx: Master of Shadows PS4	MouseCraft PS4, PS3, PS Vita
Entwined PS4, PS3, PS Vita	Rain PS3	Geometry Wars 3 PS Vita

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What were your thoughts on June’s PlayStation Plus game lineup?

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Until next time! Enjoy.

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