New Professor Layton 3DS Adventure Will be his Last

The second Professor Layton for Nintendo 3DS will also be his last, according to a translation by Andriasang.

The news was announced by Level-5's CEO Akihiro Hino during today's Nintendo Direct livestream. Roughly translated from the Japanese, the new game will be titled Professor Layton & the Remains of an Advanced Civilisation.

Although this game might mark the end of Hershel Layton, the series will in all likelihood continue with other characters occupying the central role. Layton Brothers: Mystery Room, for instance, places Layton's son Alphendi centre stage.

The game is scheduled for a Japanese release sometime in 2013.

More details to come.

Daniel is IGN's UK Staff Writer. You can be part of the world's worst cult by following him on IGN and Twitter.

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The Newsroom: "The Greater Fool" Review

Note: Full spoilers for The Newsroom season finale follow.

It's rather wonderful when an entire season comes together, culminating in a powerful finale that not only satisfies on an emotional level, but also on ties up loose ends in an equally satisfying manner. This was "The Greater Fool."

Weaving the complex subplots of nine episodes worth of material into a perfectly potent finale, "The Greater Fool" also left enough room for the show to continue to grow, especially with the small, but significant twist involving Mackenzie's choice for intern.

The romantic elements, while a touch cheesy -- especially the contrived but admittedly hilarious scene with Maggie scolding and shouting at a bus of Sex and the City fans -- also reached an important pivotal point. Many, including Rainn Wilson, have compared the Don-Maggie-Jim love triangle to the Jim-Pam-Roy subplot from the early days of The Office. Hell, even The Newsroom's Jim bares a slight resemblance to John Krasinski's Jim, not to mention the same name.

What seperates the two love triangles is how Sorkin handles the character of Don. On The Office, Roy was a brute. He drank. He played with the boys. He often treated Pam poorly. He had only a thin layer of dimension to his character. He was a foil for the relationship, nothing more. He served his purpose well -- to create romantic tension between Jim and Pam. With The Newsroom, Don is not just a foil. He's not a villain character. In fact, he's quite the opposite. While the audience may not root for him to succeed with Maggie, his dedication to the relationship, foolish or not, makes him a tragic figure (as well all know how it will end) and adds meaning and subtext to the whole dynamic. Don's a person, too. He deserves to find someone he truly values, and who values him as well.

A few seeds for how that love triangle will slowly unfold -- including the not-so-subtle hint that the triangle is actually a square -- will prove fascinating, even engaging in season two. While I've long moaned about the relationship fodder strewn throughout the series, it clicked for me tonight. And while I'd still prefer to see it dialed back just a bit, I find myself oddly looking forward to what will happen in future episodes with the characters.

Same goes for the Will-Mackenzie romantic subplot. The big reveal for Will that Mackenzie was actually in the room the day he had his public meltdown could have played with schmaltz and melodrama, but instead ended on a more, shall I say, Moonlighting note, with the two comically screaming at one another. It added a playful tone to their otherwise heavy-handed romance and teased at a more enjoyable future for the two. As Will admits, true love always wins. It's a silly notion, but if that's the direction the show wants to take, by all means. In many previous episodes, the romance felt shoehorned in -- added for color, flavor, something to keep people, those who otherwise wouldn't watch an overtly political show, watching. With "The Greater Fool," however, while still dominant, the romance felt organic, even delightful.

As for the rest of the episode, well, it was a staggering piece of television. Numerous subplots were expertly tied together. The wiretapping story collided with the Leona (Jane Fonda) subplot from early on, and reached an outstanding, and tear-jerking, conclusion. TMI's Nina (Hope Davis) got to do the right thing (sort of). And Will, who thinks himself foolish after Brian (Paul Schneider) publishes his scathing article, comes to realize that the greater fool is what this country is built upon.

Probably the most stinging element of this episode was, of course, the absolutely brutal assault on what Will labeled, "The American Taliban." Instead of calling out the entirety of the Tea party or the Republican party, Will outlines how radical thinking has sabotaged a party he firmly believes in. This aspect of "The Greater Fool" is likely to garner a pretty volatile reaction from those who agree with many of the sentiments and statements Will criticizes here, but Sorkin's writing is concise and confident, and "The Greater Fool" leaves you with a lot to think about, regardless of your political affiliation.

Like pretty much any scathing attack, there's bound to be a retort of some kind, not to mention others who simply won't believe Will's final assessment. It's not likely to sway anyone teetering on the edge, either. That said, Will's final news cast of this season does set up the direction his attacks will go in future seasons. While it may leave some Republican viewers bitter (let's be honest, this season has mostly glossed over any credible anti-Obama arguments), it's an interesting direction for the show, and should lead to more than a few compelling episodes.

The Newsroom has been an absolute delight to watch this season. While not every episode is a masterpiece, the whole is what really counts, and Season 1 is terrific. From Will's biting monologue that opened the series, to his equally biting final news cast, The Newsroom has been a daring, emotionally engaging TV series that rarely lets up. The characters are fascinating and the message of the show is one people need to hear. And I'm not talking about the Republican bashing. Rather, I'm speaking of the show's real intention -- to refocus what it means to be a TV news journalist. It's not about being balanced, it's about communicating. Sometimes, for a TV news viewer, that communication is hard to hear. And sometimes, for the journalist, it's hard to say. But regardless, a news reporter needs to do one thing -- always be honest. That's why I love The Newsroom, and I can't wait to see what's next.

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Why Games That Make YOU a Developer Are a Crucial Part of the Future

The level of connectivity we’ve reached this generation has brought with it a lot of undesirable side-effects. Day one patches. On-disc content sold back to us as downloadable content. Multiplayer that empowers and unleashes the biggest jerks mankind has to offer.

But it’s not without its benefits, and the rise and rise of user-generated content is one of them. More and more games are beginning to embrace the power of user-generated content, or UGC.

LittleBigPlanet developer Media Molecule recently announced that a staggering seven million levels had been created by users for the series. LittleBigPlanet players have made the game exponentially larger than any one studio could ever attempt to make, or any one gamer could ever hope to play. The Forza franchise has built on entire online in-game economy on the buying and selling of car designs players create themselves. Forza owners can choose from thousands upon thousands of custom and replica liveries that have been crafted by other fans with no input from developer Turn 10 whatsoever.

If you can think of a famous race car, somebody has probably already recreated it in Forza 4.

However, while UGC that’s basically indistinguishable from similar studio-created content may look like an attractive way to have users help offset the soaring costs of AAA development, there’s far more to it than that.

“It’s definitely a nice add-on to the main game, but it’s also one that has to be thought out carefully right from the start of the game,” says Antti Ilvessuo, creative director at RedLynx and lead designer of Trials Evolution. “It’s no silver bullet that you can just throw in there and think, ‘Hey this will make our game popular.’”

“

It’s no silver bullet that you can just throw in there and think, ‘Hey this will make our game popular.’

“Games and how we play them are changing really rapidly nowadays, so how you define user generated content changes also. Letting users create stuff for a game is definitely a big part of the future of games. I think a big part of that will be creating content creation in way that users don’t notice that what they are doing is creating a lot of the game’s content.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by Bigpoint’s Rune Vendler, game director on the browser-based free-to-play Gameglobe – a game built entirely around the concept of UGC.

“I don't really think of user-generated content as a shortcut to cheap labour, almost the opposite,” says Vendler. “With Gameglobe, the goal was to design a platform where being creative did not feel like hard work, but an entertaining activity in itself.”

“Putting user-generated content into a product massively changes it. Once it went live, it was obvious that we, the developers, were no longer the sole owners of Gameglobe; it's as if the game itself is now owned just as much by the community, and they get to decide a great deal about how the game evolves. For a lot of AAA games, you can't or won't share that kind of control with the users.”

John Drake, Director of Communications & Brand Management at Harmonix Music Systems, looks at UGC success stories as falling into two groups; games that let users share and/or sell created content (like the Rock Band Network) and games that drive users to create as a fundamental part of the experience. Drake cites games like Minecraft, LittleBigPlanet, and Sound Shapes as great examples of the latter.

“Both approaches have big wins and inherent limitations,” says Drake.

“

If you can give players agency to not only engage in a world but actively create within that world, your universe will be infinitely richer.

“I hope we see companies continue to evolve and embrace user-driven content as a strategy. When it's done right, ‘formal UGC’ – as opposed to general modding done outside the structure of a game – embraces the fact that games are inherently an interactive expression. If you can give players agency to not only engage in a world but actively create within that world, your universe will be infinitely richer.

“Though UGC certainly isn't a perfect fit for every title, I think it's a gamble we'll see more games willing to take as the medium evolves. The value UGC adds to a game goes beyond simple monetisation of a mechanic.

“UGC empowers the player, enriches a community, and makes a game come to life with the passion of its fans. I don't think gamers should pin all of our hopes on it, especially since designing these systems can be as time-consuming and expensive as building more assets in studio, but I think it's an exciting area to be optimistic about.”

As John Drake pointed out to us, RBN is most certainly NOT 'Baby's First Rock Band Authoring Toy'.

So why is it that more studios haven’t quite embraced this model of conscripting fans to create canyons full of content as well as others?  Are there risks in letting users make and share their own content?

“Allowing for user-generated content is limited by your game’s style,” says RedLynx’s Antti Ilvessuo. “For example, a game that is story driven would need new content that somehow fits into the rest of the game. Then there are issues about game balance, and you have to have a way to monitor and check content for stuff that is offensive. So the game style also has to be the right fit for user-generated content.”

“But still, content creation can be made possible in numerous ways. It’s just not an easy thing to do.”

Bigpoint’s Rune Vendler agrees that the process is not a simple one.

“I don't want to speculate about other studios' development plans, but I don't believe you can conscript anyone to create content,” he says. “Users have to want to make it, and have fun doing so.”

“

Users have to want to make it, and have fun doing so.

“Creating a game that supports user-generated content well is not trivial. The creative tools in Gameglobe have taken a long time to develop, and are of a completely different quality than what we're used to internally. The infrastructure needed to host and serve the content is substantial, and the technology to drive it all is complex.

"Once we got Gameglobe working, however, it was an amazing experience. We're giving people the freedom to create games and express themselves in a way many didn't think possible. Of course, they can misbehave, but with Gameglobe we've found that almost everyone reacts very positively to being handed this freedom.”

Harmonix’s John Drake also gives us a similar response.

“There are practical realities that keep UGC from being baked into every game,” he says. “Building tools that are accessible to the average player is a massive design challenge, supporting UGC systems for an evolving audience in perpetuity is expensive, curating the excellent from the average can be a struggle, and it's a big gamble that your audience will show up and be excited to create.

Drake points out that crafting a system that truly compels users to create “can't just be about ‘conscripting fans’ and crowdsourcing content.”

“For UGC to really take off, a developer needs to understand what fans love about the game in question, where they'd want to take it if they could, and how to build a pipeline to connect those desires in an accessible and decipherable way.”

“Oh, and then they need to build all those tools and ensure it doesn't absolutely break the core product that it's meant to extend,” adds Drake. “I'm thrilled, for example, that Rock Band Network tracks will work in Rock Band Blitz when it launches this August , but it meant testing for weird edge cases like, ‘What if the song only has drums and guitar?’; cases created by the breadth of content in RBN.”

The payoff for UGC done right, however, can be hugely satisfying.

“It's incredible to see what people have done in the Rock Band Network,” says Drake. “This was a professional suite of tools and standards and, to make it into Rock Band, we expected folks to rise to that level.”

“We had some reservations about whether people would want to invest that amount of time and energy, but all our concerns were silenced when we launched. The enthusiasm was palpable, and the community really self-enforced a quality bar beyond expectations.”

At this point there are over 1,800 tracks available on the RBN, available to Rock Band fans around the world.

“We've had big bands add extra tracks via this system and burgeoning acts find a really passionate audience of rhythm gamers,” says Drake. “It launched us way beyond where we expected, expanding the volume of content we could have ever created for the Rock Band audience at Harmonix.”

“The team who built the Rock Band Network are fans ourselves, so it's infinitely satisfying to see a community form around these creative tools. Harmonix built the system, but the network is really driven and owned by the community of Rock Band authors, and they're doing amazing things.”

It’s tracks of a different sort being built by fans in Trials Evolution, but the RedLynx team are no less amazed at what their biggest fans can put together.

“We as developers are always really surprised at some of the amazing things that our users have created,” says Ilvessuo. “It’s really humbling to see stuff that you never thought possible when making game made by users. It is definitely very satisfying too, to be sure.”

Luke is Games Editor at IGN AU. You can chat to him about games, cars and how Rock Band is a great way to give a four-year-old great taste in music here or find him and the rest of the Australian team by joining the IGN Australia Facebook community.

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PlayStation All-Stars Blowout on IGN

True story: IGN has been in the PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale beta for quite some time. We've been fighting, learning Level 3 super-moves, and getting our asses handed to us by really skilled fighters. However, we haven't been able to tell you about the beta due to its non-disclosure agreement.

Wednesday, the gloves come off. Yes, tomorrow, we'll be able to show you moves, intros and everything else. We'll be able to actually write about how the characters feel and what developer SuperBot Entertainment is getting right and what it's getting wrong.

You just have to wait until Wednesday, August 8th at 9 a.m. Pacific (noon Eastern). Until then, enjoy the IGN PlayStation All-Stars Wiki and this pitch for why Heavy Rain's Ethan Mars should be in the game.

Greg is the executive editor of IGN PlayStation, cohost of Podcast Beyond and host of Up at Noon. Follow IGN on Twitter, and keep track of Greg's shenanigans on IGN and Twitter. Beyond!

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Resident Evil 6: When Smarter Zombies Attack

Zombies aren’t exactly considered top-shelf video game adversaries. They’re the entry level guys. The Goombas. The grunts. The guys you fight before you get to the bigger creatures that inevitably lead to a giant boss encounter. That holds true about Capcom’s Resident Evil series as well. Sensing the legions of the undead had seen their best days, the development team in Osaka, Japan retired the brain-eating monsters almost ten years ago, opting for villagers co-opted by parasites and viral outbreaks.

Now, with Resident Evil 6, zombies have returned. But they’re not the zombies you remember.

While various films, novels and games have tried their hand at animated corpses in different ways – changing their weaknesses or movement speeds – Capcom is changing the capabilities of its bad guy staple, and making sure heroes like Leon, Jake, Chris and the recently-announced Ada Wong face them in large numbers.

Zombies leap at you. They spit acid or shriek, causing your characters to cringe in pain. They use the weapons and armor they wore when they died. If you’re smart enough to take out their legs, they’ll crawl after you. They’re relentless, the decay of their flesh and minds doing nothing to erode their savage intent. One on one, the undead are still not much of a threat, but in a narrow, confined hallway, a half dozen of them can lead to multiple deaths.

These remade, re-imagined creations are just one part of Capcom’s ambitious Resident Evil 6, which features not one but four full campaigns, each of which was developed by its own team, each of which is approximately two-thirds the size of Resident Evil 5. Put it all together, and this sixth installment could be triple the size of its predecessor.

The zombies themselves – based on what we’ve played so far – are limited to the campaigns of Leon and Ada. Perhaps not coincidentally, both of these storylines carry a very old school tone. Leon and Helena’s investigation into the C-Virus outbreak in the city of Twin Oaks takes place in the dead of night, lending a very dark, murky atmosphere that gains tension through its bursts of action. Solemn, ominous treks through Tall Oaks University erupt into all-out zombie onslaughts, forcing you to quickly determine whether it’s worth fighting or fleeing. These things aren’t homeless people asking for change – they want to eat your brains.

Ada’s journey, by contrast, has a little more of an exploration angle to it, forcing players to investigate tombs and graveyards searching for missing emblems, gems and switches to continue their quest. It’s the sort of absurd dungeon design featured in the best Resident Evil games, though being set in the dank depths of the Earth feels far more appropriate than a pristine, polished mansion. In a bit of a departure for the Resident Evil 6 norm, Ada operates without a partner, lurking in the shadows of the adventures of Leon, Chris and Jake, helping and interfering as she deems appropriate. All told, her segments of the game were impressive, featuring great puzzles, great combat and a general level of polish that seems reassuring for the production as a whole. Given that Ada’s campaign will only unlock upon the completion of the other three, a strong finish for Resident Evil 6 seems likely.

Offering the most extreme difference possible, Chris Redfield’s early campaign is set in the bright daylight, strongly calling up memories of Resident Evil 5. Much like that game, this portion of the game is action-packed, with almost non-stop gunplay. Tanks and squads of soldiers assist Chris’s incursion in Eastern Europe, as he attempts to discover the source of a C-Virus outbreak – and the deadly mutating J’avo soldiers that it can create.

Chris’s E3 demo left many wanting, featuring awkward level design and a camera that did more to hurt the experience than help. Capcom’s producers vow that feedback of this nature has made a difference, and that adjustments to a flawed camera and graphical issues like tearing will be the team’s focus in the final months of development.

This time around, with a wider environment and a camera not hell-bent on wandering aimlessly, the latest playable moments of Chris’s saga are far more impressive. The progression of events and pacing is more sensible. What’s most fascinating about Capcom’s designs here is that the controls, which are more modern, more suited for fast-paced third-person action, aren’t indicative of the best way to play the game. Attempting to ‘run and gun’ will quickly lead to a dead hero. Instead, despite being able to move while firing, Resident Evil 6 almost begs the player to play in a ‘stop and shoot’ manner, being cognizant of ammo needs while recognizing the enemy’s superior numbers.

A new segment featuring Jake and Sherry focused on the pair’s battle with a large number of J’avo, which can now not only mutate their limbs when damaged, but transform into fast-moving reptiles capable of spewing gas and needles at their foes. This demo was a far cry from what was shown at E3, which emphasized the Ustanak’s role in this campaign, a creature obsessed with capturing Jake at any cost.

Leon, Chris and Ada all seem to have found a tone and pacing that makes sense for their campaigns. Not only do their campaigns play well, but their general commitment to a particular type of horror is clear. All three of these storylines feel different, and in the best way possible. Jake does not benefit from that distinction. The pursuit with the Ustanak somehow feels less interesting than Chris’s battle with a two-story giant, and Jake’s battles with the J’avo are not nearly as well-executed as Chris’s, to say nothing of the Leon and Ada zombie encounters, which are excellent. With Capcom effectively developing four games in parallel, it seems as though one was destined to falter. Jake’s might be unfortunate enough to receive that distinction – but seeing these isolated, 15-minute slices of the game might change when they’re placed in the larger context of a campaign that might be a half-dozen (or more) hours long.

The scope of Resident Evil 6 exceeds any one preview. Despite discussing all four campaigns, we’ve said nothing about the newly announced Agent Hunt online feature, nor have we even had a chance to go hands-on with the game’s Crossover functionality – nevermind Mercenaries Mode, which Capcom has announced but hasn't detailed. It’s clear there is so much more to this adventure, which is quite literally the largest production in Capcom’s history. Fortunately we don’t have long to wait. Development is nearly finished, and we’re about two months from release. Who’s counting down the days with us?

Rich is an Executive Editor at IGN.com and the leader of the IGN Nintendo team. Follow his ridiculous adventures through IGN and Twitter. Keep it cool, Koopalings.

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