Whether you’re into the legendary Warcraft III mod DotA, the PlayStation phone becoming reality, trilogy packs for Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia and/or hearing about the dead game that just won’t die Duke Nukem Forever for the billionth time – this week HAS IT ALL!  Now that the stage has been set I’m sure all of you Axeheads are ready for blood, so let’s dive through another week with EpicBattleAxe.com’s The Rumor KILL!

THE RUMOR: Valve is making a DotA game

THE SOURCE: Destructoid

MY TAKE: To me mods have always represented the pinnacle of the gaming community.  Sure, we at The Axe and other gaming communities use intellectual discussion and analysis to try and build a better gamer but you can’t just shrug at these guys.  When a regular Joe Gamer like you and I feels so passionate about a game that they look to create new items, weapons, characters, enemies or even entire new GAMES that sometimes are even more popular than the original source material, it’s certainly worth everyone’s attention.  Classics like Counter-Strike and Team Fortress were actually mods of Half-Life and Quake respectfully.  Now, according to a tweet by voice actor Jon St. John (yes that’s his real name) the granddaddy of mods Defense of the Ancients is going to become the basis of a new Valve game. For those who need a quick history lesson, Defense of the Ancients (DotA) is a mod of Warcraft III made by alias Eul and created using the game’s World Editor.  Based on the Starcraft mission scenario “Aeon of Strife” the game has players control hero characters and destroy the heavily guarded structures known as Ancients with the help of lesser units known as “creeps”.  It’s a mod that is not only used as a tournament situation to this day but also is one of the only mods to create a sub-genre of the RTS genre.  Mainstream releases like Demigod actually based their gameplay on DotA and it looks like Valve is going to follow suit.  The problem is Demigod was a financial flop so will Valve be scared off by that?  That’s a question I will answer below.

THE VERDICT: BELIEVE IT!!!

This looks like this is happening.  On top of St. John tweeting that he was “in Seattle last week recording for DotA”, Valve has already hired the developer Icefrog who coincidentally is the current developer of the DotA scenario and have been since 2005.  That is one too many coincidences for me to ignore.  Also, financial risk shouldn’t really be a big problem for a few reasons.  For one, Demigod didn’t fail because it was a bad game, the problem was it came out way too early in development so between all the bugs and server crashes it felt more like a $60 beta then a full retail game.  Also, Gas Powered Games and Stardock (the developer and publisher respectfully) don’t have the same pedigree as Valve does.  In other words, some people buy Valve games because they are made by Valve.  Therefore, I think that Valve is smartly tapping into a new genre that they haven’t had the chance to dive into yet and are even going farther by having their game fall into a sub-genre that hasn’t really proven itself outside of the original DotA.  If anyone can do this though…it’s definitely Gabe Newell and the crew.

THE RUMOR: A PlayStation-branded phone is coming soon

THE SOURCE: Giantbomb

MY TAKE: Okay, so this one has been around pretty much since the day the PSP was announced way back in 2003.  Now it has been over 7 years and we haven’t seen a single sign that this was going to happen, though rumblings of this mystical PSPhone have come up almost every time a new Ericsson is expected to be launched.  Now, PSPhone rumor #3469 has emerged and this time a “reliable source” has reported that an Android 3.0-based PlayStation-branded phone from Sony will be available as early as October.  That’s really soon, only a couple months for a phone to be announced, marketed and released.  Anyway, I’ll dive into the details later but as far as what this phone will feature this source claims that a slide out screen between 3.7-4.1 inches for gaming and a 1GHz Snapdragon CPU to play PSP and PSOne graphically equivalent games. Interested? I am too, just comes down to whether this is actually true or not.

THE VERDICT: SPARE IT!!!

Normally I would kill any PSPhone rumors in a heartbeat, especially ones with a “reliable source” who is reliable enough to see the rumored phone in action but not reliable enough to keep his or her trap shut (though the leak could be on purpose to create hype).  What makes me have a change of heart and spare it is this apparent alliance between Sony and Google.  It actually fits if you think about it.  Google has long been rumored to be getting into the gaming business with their recent partnership with Zynga and acquisition of Jambool, a virtual currency platform developer.  This is obviously an offensive push into Apple’s Apps territory and with these acquisitions paired with the supposed power from the rumored phone could be what these companies need to play in Steve Job’s sandbox.  So for now this one goes on the back-burner till we learn a little more.  It would be nice to have a PSPhone finally come out so we can stop talking about it and instead just pray for Sony’s sake that it doesn’t go the root of N-Gage and fall with as little grace as humanly possible.

THE RUMOR: Ubisoft is releasing Spinter Cell and Prince of Persia trilogies for the PS3

THE SOURCE: Joystiq

MY TAKE: I think this is the point in the console where Microsoft is going to start kicking themselves for not getting on the Blu-ray train.  Right now the PS3 is the only console that can put 2 (or even 3) games from the last generation on one disk.  This is really going to start to hurt when games like Rage have to come on two or three Xbox 360 disks but only need one Blu-ray disk on the PS3.  That’s kind of off topic but it does dive into why we’re seeing this “Collection” fad creep in and why it only seems to be on the PS3.  So with the God of War Collection pretty much deemed a success and the Sly Cooper Collection on its way the rumors of more Collections are flooding in faster than we can write about.  The latest one is actually not the typical Collection format of two PlayStation-exclusive games and putting them on one Blu-Ray disk. These two packages are actually the Prince of Persia trilogy and the Splinter Cell Trilogy…even though Splinter Cell isn’t a trilogy. Anyway, according to Amazon France both of these sets will be available for 39.95 Euro ($54) and will both be out on November 2^nd.  Possible?  Sure anything is.  Happening?  That’s a different story.

THE VERDICT: KILL IT!!!

I really think this is a mistake. For one thing we have no information about these trilogy sets and, just like the PSPhone, it seems a bit weird to potentially see these sets in November while not hearing a single word about them yet.  There’s also the fact that if the article is to be believed, these sets are going to be PS3-exclusive which is odd considering both of these franchises are third party and support other consoles.  In fact, the latest Splinter Cell was an Xbox 360-exclusive which makes a PS3-exclusive trilogy of the series make less sense. I think these Collections or whatever you want to call them are going to stay with first party Sony games and the third parties will either release these trilogies in a multiplatform manner or not at all.  Therefore, I feel like we are more likely to see a Team Ico Collection then a Prince of Persia, trilogy which is good news or bad news depending on what side of the fence you’re on.

THE RUMOR: Duke Nukem Forever is being developed by Gearbox

THE SOURCE: 1UP

MY TAKE: Another Duke Nukem Forever rumor??  ANOTHER ONE!!  You want to talk about rumors that just won’t die! This game has gone through multiple delays, the development team went bankrupt and then were sued and still…still we think there is this glimmer of hope that the timeless wonder Duke Nukem Forever will grace the presence of a store shelves in our lifetime.  So through various sources it appears that Gearbox, the minds behind the cel-shaded Mad Max wet dream Borderlands are going to finally finish development on Duke’s long-awaited sequel and could even have a demo out by the end of the year.  Yep you read that right, a demo by year’s end.  Could this be it? Could this be the year that we finally see Duke Nukem Forever at a damn retailer so that poor bastard who pre-ordered it all those years ago can cash in? Although… now that I think about it he probably died of hold age with the receipt clenched in his bony, decomposing hand.

THE VERDICT: BELIEVE IT!!!

If only for the sake of never having to talk about this damn game again this better be true (and yes, I do have reasons for believing other than pure frustration).  Duke is the type of character that needs Gearbox’s off beat creative minds in order to d-…wait, wait, wait…do you honestly care?  I mean seriously, do you actually really want to play Duke Nukem Forever?  You know after going through three engine changes, three different publishers and two development teams the game is going to be god damn mess.  How could there be a well strung together narrative, focused gameplay and unique atmosphere when it’s taken 13 years to get to the point that there MAY be a demo at the end of the year.  I almost want to boycott it out of spite for this joke of a development.  Sadly though, I will have to play it…only because I believe you only get a once in a lifetime chance to play a game that’s been in development for over a decade and folks, this it probably it.

THE FINAL SAY

This week my final say is about some potentially awesome news.  According to reports zombies will indeed be included in Call of Duty: Black Ops as a multiplayer mode.  That’s awesome news if I ever heard it.  Yes I know that Activision and Call of Duty are kind of a sour topic on this site but those who played Call of Duty: World at War know that this is THE mode in COD.  Forget Spec Ops guys, IMO, this is the mode you want to play.  So props to Treyarch for keeping the one game mode that will take you out of Modern Warfare’s grossly overweight shadow.

So that will do it for me and the slaughtering of rumors this week. I now give you the floor to do what you want with these rumors, whether you BELIEVE and let them blossom into truth, SPARE and move them to the back of the execution line or KILL and send them right to the butcher shop…the rumors are now in your hands.  This has been another edition of EpicBattleAxe.com’s The Rumor KILL.  Have a good week everyone!