Just the other day we brought you word that Tim Schafer, the man behind some of the adventure gaming genre’s finest, is close to getting a sequel to Psychonauts funded by unusual means. Now he’s at it again, pitching an adventure game to it’s next investor: you.

The Physchonauts sequel may be funded by Minecraft developer Notch, if Twitter’s anything to go on, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of odd funding for Schafer’s company Double Fine.

The new adventure game up DF’s sleeves wants to be funded by all comers on the fund-raising site Kickstarter.

“Adventure games are a lost art form,” says Schafer, the man behind such classics as Day of the Tentacle. He claims that publishers would laugh in his face if he pitched an adventure game these days, what with all da yoof wanting nowt but Call of Duty sequels. And so to Kickstarter.

The Psychonauts sequel funded by Minecraft

The company’s looking for $300,000 to make the game and $100,000 to film to process, with rewards of various sizes to generous donators. And, staggeringly, it’s made it in under 24 hours, proving the demand is still incredibly strong for this style of game.

More than anything, though, it shows that you can get the game of your dreams into production without the backing of a major publishing house. You know… As long as you’re Tim Schafer. Check out the video below for the full lowdown:

Picture courtesy of @richardcobbett

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Vodafone has released its pricing model for the PS Vita ahead of its February 22nd UK launch date. This is the 3G PS Vita we’re looking at – the one with a SIM card built in. So what’ll it cost you? And what goodies will you get in return? Read on to find out.

The P Vita will land in two different flavours: WiFi only and 3G. The 3G model will be available via Vodafone, who’ll imbue it with a pay as you go SIM. Each time you top up £5 Vodafone will give you 250mb of data, lasting a month.

Everything you need to know about the PS Vita

The cost of the PS Vita itself? £279 with a 4GB memory card. If you’re tempted by the 3G model over the standard WiFi Vita, let us sweeten the deal with this: your first 3G PS Vita top up will earn you a copy of WipEout 2048 for free.

That’s not to mention the fact that with 3G you’ll be able to access the PSN Store on the move and use Google Maps when out and about. Is £279 too steep or just about right? Let us know your thoughts.

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The weirdest news of the day by far, this, but also probably the best. The cult classic Tim Schafer game Psychonauts could be about to get a hugely overdue sequel thanks to an unlikely source.

Head of Double Fine productions and all-round gaming legend Tim Schafer has been speaking to Digital Spy about the much-loved platformer, claiming that he’s all for a sequel: “I mean I get a lot of, on Twitter or whatever, daily questions about Psychonauts 2.

And I would love to do Psychonauts 2, I’ve actually pitched that to publishers several times and no-one has taken the bait so far.”

Minecraft 2 on the way?

He went on to suggest that the only thing stopping him is money. “I’d love to do that game, but I’d have to convince someone to just give me a few million dollars, that’s all.” Cue our unlikely funder: Notch, the chap behind runaway PC success Minecraft.

Within hours of the Schafer interview going up, Notch sent two tweets to Schafer. The first saying “Let’s make Psychonauts 2 happen,” and the second saying: “Also, I’m serious.” Amazing news.

Not sure what we’re talking about? You’ve probably never played Psychonauts. You’ve no excuse not to, really. It’s just £7 on both the Mac App Store and Steam. Go and play it now, and come back when you’re as excited about Psychonauts 2 as us. Failing that, watch the below:

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Crysis developer Crytek has liftedthe lid on Gface, the OnLive-meets-Facebook gaming social network that could genuinely transform multiplayer gaming. Why’s it so special? And what does it actually do? Read on to find out.

So you know how you can play games with your online friends through Facebook? But the games are mostly flash-based nonsense like the Zynga-developed FarmVille? Gface is a bit like that except with fully-3D core titles. It’s a social network designed to allow users to easily find their friends and set up online games with them.

It means that playing online multiplayer bouts of Crysis or other such titles with your mates will be as simple as seeing if they’re online a la Facebook chat.

So far, so Steam, but the icing on the cake is the fact that it’s all cloud-based and runs in your browser, which means that (as with OnLive) you don’t need a top end computer and there’s nothing to install.

OnLive and Google kill the games console

The Gface/Crytek team up could really shakeup the way we pay online multiplayer. It’s already been proved that such like-minded online hubs work wonders, as with the in-browser Quake Arena since 2009. If Gface can wrangle enough developers and titles into its stable as possible, it could become the de facto place for online multiplayer.

It’s not just for games, though: Gface also seems to be a fully-fledges social network with an interest in movies, music and picture sharing.

As it is, that’s kind of all we know: the service is in closed beta. If you’re lucky enough to be in the Gface inner circle, let us know what your experience has been like.

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Take Two Games believes that its 2013 financial year will be “one of [its] best years ever”, which could point to a Christmas release for Grand Theft Auto 5. The publisher announced a drop in profits for its fiscal third quarter of 2011, but CEO Strauss Zelnick is bullish about its prospects in the near future.

Grand Theft Auto 5 is sure to shift a sizeable amount of units, and while Take Two and Rockstar Games have yet to announce a release date, Zelnick’s enthusiasm could well be down to him knowing something the rest of us don’t. While the fiscal 2013 extends well past Christmas 2012 (it actually ends in 31 March 2013), games of GTA 5’s prestige and weight are almost always released in the lucrative run-up to “the Holidays”.

Of course, Take Two has other irons in the fire, with a number of AAA games due for release in the same financial year: Max Payne 3; Spec Ops; XCOM; and BioShock Infinite.

We’re personally “super pumped” about the prospect of devouring several pounds of turkey and then escaping the inevitable family rows to drive around Rockstar’s skewed version of Los Angeles. Here are nine things we’d like to see in GTA 5.

(Via MCV)

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Sir Howard Stringer, the Cardiff-born chief executive and president of Sony, is stepping down from his role after seven years at the head of the Japanese company. His replacement, Kazuo Hirai, will be a familiar name for most gadget fans, having been a central figure in Sony’s PlayStation business for many years.

Sony is expected to announce a fourth year operating at a loss in March, and it seems Hirai is being given the top spot as part of a plan to get the company back into the black. Not that one could lay all the blame for its disappointing performance on Sir Howard Stringer’s shoulders: the Japanese earthquake and resulting tsunami, as well as floods in Thailand, have played a major part by disrupting production. And indeed, Sir Howard is to remain at Sony as chairman of the board.

Sony music chief: Spotify can still fail

51 year-old Hirai has been a key figure at Sony since the 1990s and the rise of the PlayStation brand, and is seen as something of an expert when it comes to content delivery across multiple hardware platforms – so we could see the company look towards this as a major focus in the near future.

Is this a smart move by Sony? Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments.

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It’s been recently revealed that the Nintendo Wii U console’s controllers will come loaded with NFC technology, and it seems the company wants to use it to revolutionise the way gamers purchase DLC. The idea is to take the fuss out of buying downloads by making the purchasing process as simple as possible.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata believes that the company has struggled with DLC in the past chiefly because there are two many “steps” involved in the process: “It is said that with each extra step, the number of customers drops by one tenth. Our challenge is how to improve such steps on by one.”

The Wii U tablet controller comes with NFC, and Nintendo is looking at using this technology to allow gamers to purchase DLC with a mere swipe of their credit cards. This way the kerfuffle of purchasing prepaid Wii Points cards or manually entering credit card details is neatly sidestepped. The Wii U will also have an advantage over the Wii in that it will come with a hard drive to store the DLC – no need to use SD cards here.

Of course, NFC is not without its own problems, and Iwata is aware that whatever system is put in place does not allow for accidental purchases (at this point we’re imagining Little Johnny grabbing his dad’s credit card and buying everything in the Wii U online store).

The Nintendo Wii U will launch in the UK later this year.

(Via Develop)

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Soul Calibur 5 may be the fifth entry in the fighting series, but at a time when talk of publishers stringing out sequels for the sake of an extra buck is rife, it’s worth remembering that such talk doesn’t always apply to the fighting genre.

The beat-em-up subculture (in good time) welcomes changes, tweaks, improvements and new tactics to play with. And like every good fighting game revision, Soul Calibur 5 delivers. Publisher and developer Namco Bandai can hardly be accused of rushing out Soul Calibur 5, either – the latest in the series comes a full four years after Soul Calibur 4.

Striking a balance with any new fighting follow-up is a tricky business: make too many changes and risk the wrath of a tightly-knit fan-base, but make too few and be accused of cashing-in. Soul Calibur 5 errs welcomingly in between. There are enough changes to please casual beat-em-up fans: new characters, better graphics and story mode. “Hardcore” fight fans can look forward to that lot, but also take pleasure from what remains a deceptively deep combat system, a fabulously intuitive character creation tool, online play, new Critical Edge attacks and new ways to guard and counter.

To the untrained eye, watching two players play Soul Calibur 5 looks like a button-bashing free-for-all, but making an effort to learn the gameplay reaps plenty of rewards, as you learn to vary low attacks with medium and high, short and long range, and jab-like attacks giving the opponent little chance to react, waiting for the other to make a wrong move, blocking before using their momentum to strike back. Whether you’re a novice or expert, the core gameplay that made fans love Soul Calibur in the first place, remains. Soul Calibur 5 is easy to get into, but incredibly tricky to master.

The introduction of Critical Edge and Brave Edge attacks fuelled by a gauge makes fights more dramatic. Hit the enemy enough times and you’ll be able to unleash a powerful attack that your foe has little, if any chance of evading. An in-fight cinematic sequence signals when you, or the opponent is about to unleash one of these. There’s an increased emphasis on special moves yet to be seen in the series, giving players more of a chance to mix it up, and get out of a tight spot. Pulling these off never gets old.

New guarding techniques let you counter any attack simply by holding down a combination of buttons. You’ll think you won’t need them, until you face main baddie Nightmare at a later stage on high difficulty, who rarely lets you get in a free hit. You must initiate the guard at precisely the right moment, or it won’t work. Master this, and you’ll be on your way to becoming unstoppable.

Fresh faces are a highlight of Soul Calibur 5. A number of the old guard remain, while others have been cleared out to make way for new faces, not least Assassin’s Creed killer Ezio Auditore. Ezio excels at both long and short range attacks. Projectile weapons keep enemies at bay, but get in close and he can be deadly. Z.W.E.I. uses the power of magic to summon a werwolf to mix and match sword attacks, his mystical powers capable of stringing together some impressive-looking, and richly satisfying combos that look more complicated than they are to pull off.

Where does Assassin’s Creed’s writer want to go next? Ireland

Viola uses Freddie Krueger-like claws and a crystal ball to deal damage, like a young Mystic Meg gone rogue. She excels at keeping enemies at a distance, and is well suited to defensive players. Xiba replaces old favourite Kilik as the male staff-wielder, and has many of the same moves. His long range moves are great for knocking opponents out of the ring, but some of these moves can take longer to pull off, leaving him vulnerable.

One of the biggest changes comes in the form of a new, tighter story mode in which you play as fresh-faced-wavy-haired-blonde swordsman Patroklos, who must battle foes in order to rescue his sister, and in turn put an end to evil goings-on centering around the mysterious Soul Calibur sword. The story is told through CGI cutscenes, hand-drawn comic style illustrations and voice-overs – each very well executed. The cutscenes in particular are gorgeous.

In fact, Soul Calibur 5 throughout is quite possibly the most visually-arresting fighting game we’ve ever laid eyes on. The visuals are bright and clean, with not a single jagged edge or pixel out of place, complementing the good looks of its cast. The story is well told, but doesn’t last as long as it could: when you’ve finished this section there’s little incentive to go back and do it all over again.

Arcade (Six stages of time trial), Quick Battle (one-off fights of three rounds), Versus, Practice and Online modes deliver more than enough to keep fans satisfied, letting players jump straight into battle with an A.I or human opponent. A “Soul Link” feature acts as a calling card to compare against your rival, displaying time played, matches won, and lost. The more you play, the more goodies you unlock.

Players earn points whatever mode they play, unlocking weapons to customise players, new stages and costumes and soundtracks. A brilliant character creation tool lets you tweak an existing character, or build your own combatant from scratch. The possibilities feel limitless – we even made a terrifying Bob Hoskins-like Super Mario for your eyes only, but we’re sure others will be much more imaginative.

Soul Calibur 5 is a welcome refresh of a series for a new generation adding more pace and dramatic gameplay to sure to appease new players, familiar gameplay to satisfy existing fans, and enough of a combat overhaul to keep expert players experimenting. Soul Calibur 5 is a good fit whatever the type of player, and more than a match for the brilliant fighters still to come in 2012.

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There are three things I don’t understand in life. Economics is the most gaping chasm in my knowledge: if Greece is bankrupt, why doesn’t it just print more money?

The second is why Square-Enix keeps refusing to remake Final Fantasy 7, the best video game of the 1990s, but is happy to rehash Chrono Trigger, the second best game of the 1990s, on Nintendo DS and iPhone.

The third, by coincidence, also relates to the Japanese gaming giant. I can’t comprehend why it would amalgamate elements from both these iconic titles, then try and staple them on to the sequel of the worst single player entry in the Final Fantasy series so far.

That’s not to say that Final Fantasy 13-2 is a bad game. Far from it. It addresses many of the problems Final Fantasy 13, a Brobdingnagian but strangely blinkered RPG, suffered from: namely, it being one long corridor that takes 50 hours to walk down.

It’s just that in doing so, Square takes the best bits of its classic games, and slaps you in the face with them.

Let’s start at the beginning, which is actually the end of the first game: the world floating above the other, Cocoon, has been saved. But for some reason, that game’s protagonist, Lightning, has fallen through time to the end of the world, and has decided to guard this other realm, rather than say, go home and have a bubble bath. Whatever. You’ll have to get used to these non-sequiturs, they happen a lot in this game. I still have no idea what a fal’cie is, either.

Within minutes, the game’s enemy, Caius, is seen slowing releasing the body of a young woman into the water. What? This is Square flipping its middle finger at Final Fantasy fans, and an obvious riff on an iconic scene in FF7.

People with impossibly spiky hair wander around, travelling through time (Chrono Trigger) and musing on the nature of fate for quite a few hours, until later on in the game, you end up at an amusement park with mini-games remarkably similar to the Golden Saucer. FF7 again. Thanks Square.

But I digress. I love Final Fantasy, and I’ve had a chip on my shoulder ever since Square showed off its PS3 technical demo, a glorious remake of the opening of FF7, and gaming’s greatest tease.

Final Fantasy 13-2, allusions to classics aside, is a perfectly acceptable sequel. It doesn’t dump on any paradigms, or smack any moulds in the face with a sledgehammer.

Square’s trimmed the fat, tweaking the gameplay and reducing the cast. Gone are summons, or eidolons, monstrous titans that became oddly feeble as the first game went on. Out too is crude stereotype Sazh, a black man with hair so nappy that a chocobo nested in it.

Instead, you’re left to adventure through all of Gran Pulse across the ages with two characters, Lightning’s sister, Serah, and Noel, ostensibly from the End Times, but actually lifted straight out of Kingdom Hearts before he could even finish straightening his hair. He’s come back in time to help Serah find Lightning and change the future because he fancies a breath of fresh air, as far as I can tell.

Questionable motivations aside, the new structure is certainly more interesting than travelling in a straight line, punctuated by fights. You travel across different time zones, accessed by gates, which you have to unlock by finding artifacts. You can tackle each one in almost any order, and even end up with different game endings as a result.

This new layout is not without its flaws however: the different routes across time mean difficulty level can fluctuate wildly. After getting stuck at one seemingly impossible boss, I headed off to complete a different section, only to return and find myself massively over-levelled, wading through enemies with no trouble whatsoever. Still, if it’s sections proving too easy, or having to grind for hours just to level up and survive, I choose the former.

The battle system, one of the biggest gripes that many had with Final Fantasy 13, has changed very little however. Proceedings play out at a blinding clip and bosses boast HP in the seven figures: it’s up to you to choose the tactics rather than the individual commands, but there’s an incentive to finish fights quickly, as enemies can now “wound” you and reduce your maximum health, making fights increasingly hairy the longer they last. Do you go all out and assault, or have someone take the blows while everyone else buffs up with spells? By everyone I mean, of course, Serah and your Pokemon.

Oh, did I not mention that there’s Pokemon? Yeah, there’s Pokemon.

Instead of a third character, you can use animals that you defeat and capture. They have the same roles as humans, acting as medics or commandos and so forth, and can be levelled up with items found lying around. It’s not quite throwing red and white balls at monsters and hoping they squeeze into them somehow, but it’s still litigiously close.

So is the game any good? Well, it looks it at any rate: the game is an ocular feast. It’s so rare that we’re treated to a game developed for the PS3 these days, rather than simply ported to it, that you almost forget what Sony’s black box is still capable of. Assuming you like simpering anime characters with implausible eyes and implausible breasts, anyway.

If you’ve read this far, you’re probably au fait with this: it’s the price you pay for a tactical game that pits you against fantastical giant bosses that require strategy, rather than a trigger finger, to knock over.

As a story-driven Japanese roleplaying game though, it’s time to concede that Final Fantasy is no longer the high watermark. Monolith’s Xenoblade Chronicles for Wii, a vast, mesmerising paean to what a J-RPG should be, holds that mantle now instead.

As a sequel to a sequel, Final Fantasy 13-2 is a concession that Square would rather tread water than try. It’d rather do hyphens than new games. Fewer characters and a couple more doors along the corridor won’t change the simple fact that if you didn’t like 13’s fight system, its meat and two veg, Final Fantasy 13-2 won’t convince you otherwise.

If you did however, it’s an enjoyable return to the same universe, and not much more. Just try not to think about Final Fantasy Versus 13 too much. That remake of 7 will be out before that ever sees the light of day.

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Remember the Nintendo Wii U unveiling at E3 last year? Remember how confusing it was, and how loads of people thought that the tablet gaming controller was just an add-on for the existing Wii? Nintendo’s got itself into a worried state and may be on the verge of a complete rebranding.

“Serious discussions are ongoing at the highest level in the US and Japan as to whether the firm should cut its losses and give the console a different name,” claims a source “close to the platform holder.”

Will the Wii U be Nintendo’s last ever console?

It would be a very brave move for Nintendo, so it would have to be one that the company really felt was necessary. We know that Ninty thought its E3 unveiling was ‘disappointing’, and anecdotal evidence on our end confirms that the message was confusing.

A brand new name, designed to fully differentiate the new console from the existing Wii, could help avoid the confusion that befell the Nintendo 3DS; many stores reported people buying 3D games for their original DS thinking it was all part ofthe same thing.

So what name could Nintendo go for? Answers on a postcard…

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