With the quiet Summer months offering precious little in the way of wholesome gaming goodness, all eyes are on Sony Europe, which is set to lift the lid off the massively anticipated third-party FPS, Killzone, in the first week of August. (Click here to read about the first concrete details).
But while the media circles around SCEE's office like a particularly bloodthirsty swarm of vultures, development on another secret third-party title that the publisher has snapped up is proceeding in secret at a nearby developer.
We can reveal that Camden-based developer Blue 52 is developing an action-adventure known as 'Stolen' exclusively for PlayStation 2.
An insider source told us: "Stolen is a PS2 action-adventure that's still very early at this point. But the technology is amazing - one of Sony's remits was that it wanted something that was technically incredible just to prove that PS2 is still up to it.
"Sony signed it on the strength of the technology, but at that time it was just nice tech in search of a game. Now, it's still about a year and a half away from being complete."
Very little is known about the content of the game at this point, aside from its genre, but sources indicate that because of high technology values, the game is "room-based" like GameCube's Metroid Prime, which allows a lot of tech to be crammed into small areas.
Other unconfirmed info we've uncovered is that Stolen is believed to be third-person and have a female lead. As for the title - 'Stolen' - we'll let you draw your own conclusions...
We contacted Blue 52 for clarification, but a spokesperson edgily replied: "We can't say anything about that - you'll have to speak to Sony." Which is as good as: "Yes, we are working on the game, but Sony would lock us in a room and make us watch RI:SE if we told you anything."
As for Sony, a spokesperson would only state: "We haven't announced that game or any other game beyond Spring, with the exception of Killzone, at the present moment." Although SCEE hasn't strictly announced Killzone either, of course.
It's unlikely anything official on the game will be made available for a good while yet, but we'll do our best to uncover more from this mysterious title. Now we just need a good tag for it - if Killzone is PS2's 'Halo-beater', then Stolen must be...
In poche parole:
Sony vuole dimostrare le potenzialità della sua Ps2, il gioco è un action adventure in terza persona, probabilmente avrà una protagonista femminile, ha qualche cosa che somiglia a Metroid ma non ho capito cosa, la tecnologia è stupefacente, il gioco è completo al 50% e.......
Avete letto la chiusura dell'articolo?
"Se KillZone è l'Halo-Killer, allora Stolen deve essere..."
A voi le speculazioni
PS: continua così SCEE!
$.t.a.r.s.