“Snake-66 is mission go!”

Hi all! Having just come back from a great gamescom show in Germany, here’s your chance to learn all about the co-op campaign in Battlefield 3 that we showed off on PS3. We designed co-op to be the perfect blend between the strong narrative from single player and the open-ended action from multiplayer. We are fusing the replayability of multiplayer with a pick up-and-play mentality to create a totally new flavor of Battlefield.

Co-op follows the same philosophy as our award-winning multiplayer game mechanics. Teamwork is practically never forced upon you, but working together will make things much easier and — more importantly — lead to victory.

For the most part, the missions in the co-op campaign are asymmetric. This means that one mission can have you piloting a helicopter while your friend is the gunner, for example. Other situations have one player disarming a bomb and the other one defending him. Or (as you could see in our press conference playthrough at gamescom) you can do tandem kills to avoid detection. There are also other mechanics requiring teamwork, such as spotting enemies to make large firefights easier, or the essential concept of reviving one another to avoid ending up at the game over screen.

Man down! Give your co-op buddy a helping hand to stay in the game.

The co-op missions in Battlefield 3 all take place in the same world as the single-player campaign, and follow a unique series of events that lead up to an explosive finish. Players in co-op will take the role of soldiers that are not tied to any one particular branch of the Armed Forces. This is an intentional design decision to allow for a vast variety in gameplay in the different co-op missions.

Extracting Hamid El Zakir

At gamescom 2011, we ran Battlefield 3 in co-op for the first time, with the mission Exfiltration on 10 PlayStation 3 stations. During the five days of the show, thousands of fans and journalists got hands-on time with Exfiltration. The mission revolves around a defecting informant, El Zakir, that you and your co-op friend need to escort to safety. The mission starts outside the building where El Zakir resides. You need to move in, remove any opposition, and extract the target. If you can make it that far without raising a single alarm, there’s a little bonus in it for you.

Part two of Exfiltration has you clearing a path for your convoy so you can reach the outskirts of the city, before entering two vehicles and manning the top-mounted machine guns to provide some assistance. There’s much more to the mission, but that gives you an idea of what to expect.

Lend a Helping Hand

To survive through the co-op missions, you’ll need to stay close to your buddy. If he goes down, lend a helping hand with the new co-op “Man down!” mechanic, that lets you revive him in the heat of battle. While being down, you can still use your secondary weapon to defend yourself, while slowly crawling to a safer spot where your friend can help you without getting shot. If both of you go down, it’s game over.

You fight together. You die together. And you score together. After having cleared a co-op mission with your friend, your total combined score will be displayed via Battlelog, our suite of free social features that connect all Battlefield 3 players. Missions are designed to be shorter than single-player missions, so you can easily do multiple rounds in an evening to try and beat your friends’ high score. The best score of your friend will be displayed for each mission, so you know what to aim for.

Expect to encounter high difficulty: We are definitely going for a tough challenge in all missions. Also, since competitive players will likely try each mission several times, all of the co-op missions contain randomized elements to keep every playthrough fresh. Clearing the co-op missions not only gives you scores and bragging rights – it also has benefits for your multiplayer career. There are a number of weapons that you can unlock in co-op and take with you to the regular multiplayer modes. These unlocks are based on your combined scores accumulated throughout the co-op campaign.

We hope you enjoyed this first look at Exfiltration. It was very rewarding meeting our fans at gamescom, and we hope you stay tuned for more blog posts here at the PlayStation.Blog as we move ever closer to launch. And don’t forget there’s an upcoming Open Beta in September!

I checked out Aliens: Colonial Marines when I popped over to the SEGA gamescom booth to say hi to a friend and, within minutes, it became one my highlights of the show. I’m not as familiar with the Aliens films as many – I remember seeing one of them on TV as a child and not sleeping well for a few days – but judging it purely as a shooter, it is looking very impressive.

The level shown was a beautifully lit labyrinth of corridors on-board a craft sent to investigate LV-426, 11 months after Ripley escaped in Aliens. The most memorable aspect for me was the animation of the Xenomorphs and my skin is crawling as I type just thinking about them. This added to the level design, which always leaves you feeling exposed as creatures pour from every angle and air vent, produces an unnerving shooter that piles on the tension.

After the demo, I spoke with Gearbox Chief Creative Officer Brian Martel about working with such an iconic IP and why his team is best suited to bringing the essence of the Aliens films to the interactive space.

Earlier in the week, Rocksteady Studios told us that they had been given the creative freedom to build their own ‘Batman canon’ with the Arkham games. Is that what you’re trying to do with Aliens: Colonial Marines?

That’s exactly what we’re looking to do. Fox has been great to work with and SEGA has been a good partner in building the bridges between developer and IP holder. Fox is a little more flexible with the canon than other companies out there, but they do have to be careful not to annoy directors – if you put together a proposition that assumes a particular film never happened, the director isn’t going to like that very much and Fox may have plans to work with them again in the future.

We’re able to introduce our own elements that we feel are right for the interactive space, whether that’s weapons or new types of aliens, and we’re aware that in doing so we’re adding to the existing canon.

What is the essence of the Aliens films?

The aliens aren’t just looking to kill you, they’re trying to propagate the species and take you elsewhere so they can get you face-hugged. That’s the threat and it forms the scary aspect of the world, and then you also need to have the high action aspect. If you watch the film Aliens, there aren’t too many scare moments; it’s scary because you know what’s going to happen if you get caught but it’s action-packed, and to make a great game like this you have to have lots of aliens, lots of stuff to shoot at. You need the diversity between extremely quiet all the way up to high-octane.

What are the differences between creating fear cinematically, in a film, and doing so in the interactive space?

A lot of it is the same, so you’re going to have audio cues that catch the player unaware and you always want to use some misdirection, drawing the eye to one spot and then making something happen elsewhere. But at the end of the day, with a co-op shooter it’s pretty hard to truly scare the player so that’s why Colonial Marines is more action driven. It’s not like Dead Space, which has a fright around every corner, or something like Condemned, which was pure tension throughout.

We could talk about the Aliens IP all day; what gameplay innovations are you bringing to the table?

You’re going to see a lot of growth in terms of what you expect from a Gearbox game that is co-op focused. Obviously, things like the look and atmosphere belong to the Aliens universe, but underneath you’re going to get a sense of something that is totally Gearbox.

Why is Gearbox the right developer to take on the Aliens IP?

If you take a look at our track record on working with IPs, whether it’s Half Life or James Bond, we’ve been true and honest with what it needs to be. We’re one of the best at that, looking at what gamers want and expect from the license and giving it to them.

What’s more important to Aliens fans: familiarity or surprise?

It’s important to have these little signposts or fan service moments, such as finding out what happened to Burke or seeing what happened to Hudson when he got pulled down. But then you also have people coming in who might never have seen the movies so we’re bringing something for everybody.

You may recognize Executive Producer Jason DeLong on Need for Speed: The Run from our live E3 show, which we streamed live from our PlayStation booth earlier this year. Interactive cinemas, fast cars and loud tunes propelled The Run at E3, but all along EA Black Box was quietly scheming to reveal more at gamescom.

In my play session, I chased after a pearl white Laborghini Aventador down a treacherous mountain road on Independence Pass in Colorado. Then it happened: I found myself staring at an oncoming avalanche from behind the wheel of my car, plowing and drifting through chaos while I sat comfortably in a dark room at EA’s show floor. I couldn’t help but smile after my demo session with Need for Speed: The Run, knowing that I finally got to play a true-to-form Michael-Bay-inspired Hollywood action racer on my PS3.

I got a few minutes with DeLong and picked his brain about a retaining the authenticity and how the high-tech Frostbite rendering engine opens up new storytelling vistas for this action racer.

So for this year’s gamescom conference, the Insomniac crew hopped across the pond to show off our anticipated fall titles, including Resistance 3. By now, you’ve probably seen the beautiful new Olly Moss-inspired trailer, right? If you haven’t, I’m giving you permission to stop reading this post for a second to watch it.

The gaming media also experience a new section of Resistance 3 behind closed doors, so expect new previews to start rolling in soon. Fans on the show floor were able to play a single-player demo of the game so they can get a feel for the riveting atmospheric action Resistance 3 has in store.

Meanwhile, Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One showed up with its guns blazing in a new trailer showcasing the mischievous side of four-player co-op gameplay along with the banter that radiates from the dysfunctional foursome of Ratchet, Clank, Qwark, and Dr. Nefarious. If moving images are a little too exciting for you, check out these screenshots which tease the epic Wigwump battle in the game. Great, now my earthworm nightmares are going to crop back up again.

Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One was also on the show floor with a new demo for all the attendees to play and enjoy. From the looks of it, boatloads of people have been itching to get their hands on the co-op adventure. No, I mean literally boatloads of people. Look at this picture.

There you have it: gamescom 2011. Luckily, both of these games will be out soon. Resistance 3 drops on September 6th and Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One lands on October 18th in North America. Be sure to preorder both titles in order to reap exclusive bonus content. You can also register at www.ratchetandclank.com to get some free PSN Avatars, Home t-shirts and Static Theme! If you want to keep up with all the latest news on both of these titles be sure to follow us on Twitter and “Like” our Facebook page.

And with that, we leave you Germany. You are truly a country with gaming (and boats!) at its core. Au revoir! That’s German, right?

Last year, Capcom and Ninja Theory revealed their re-imagining of Devil May Cry (now known as “DmC”) at the 2010 Tokyo Game Show. The response to Dante’s makeover and new look to the universe was split between adoration and outright confusion, with fans questioning the new look and fighting style of protagonist Dante.

Heading into gamescom, I received word that Creative Director Tameem Antoniades wanted to discuss DmC’s progress and indulge me in Dante’s new found love for aerial combat. After being reunited with Tameem and Dante, I’m left crying for more.

LittleBigPlanet and LBP2 enabled PS3 players to play, create and share custom-made levels and game modes online for all to enjoy. Now, with the upcoming PS Vita game harnessing the handheld’s plethora of inputs and sensors for playing and creating, Sackboy’s new adventure will be the most accessible – and empowering – LittleBigPlanet yet.

We’ve seen glimpses of what PS Vita adds to Play starting at E3, when SCEE’s Pete Smith demonstrated how the touch screen, gyroscopes, and rear touch panel helped Sackboy navigate levels in all-new ways. At gamescom, Smith was joined by Tarsier Studios designer Richard Meredith to show us some more Play possibilities and tools you’ll use to Create new types of games.

Even the “Super Oval” shape of PS Vita is giving the development team novel new possibilities. Smith turned the Vita vertically to demonstrate a gravity-based game where players rapidly sort colored balls into the right chute – reminiscent of a touch-enabled version of PSN game Droplitz.

Next, the duo demonstrated an air hockey game where two people can play at once by each grabbing one side of the PS Vita. The demonstration made clear that, much like in LBP2, Vita’s LittleBigPlanet will allow for games far outside of simple side-scrolling platformers. Add in PS Vita’s tilt sensors, front and real touchscreen, cameras, and microphone and you’ve got a powerful but intuitive suite of control options for playing and creating levels.

Of course, if you see it in the world of LittleBigPlanet, you can also create it yourself.

Meredith took the controls here, showing how the most basic functions of creation can now be mapped to the intuitive touch screen. He first painted a simple stickman with his finger. As he dragged the completed scarecrow around the screen, the game automatically recorded the movement path. When he let go, and the little man danced along the path all on his own. Sorcery!

Smith then shared an anecdote about how development team members were tasked with making a complete game in about three minutes. Meredith re-created the experience by selecting a Swiss cheese texture and drawing a maze with his finger, dropping in a few pitfalls to make things interesting. Then he snapped a photo of someone’s mouth with the PS Vita camera, which he placed as the end goal of the maze. Drop in a ball, assign tilt controls to steer, and you’ve got yourself a game! Meredith also showed a more advanced version of that level, which took him a couple of hours to create. Though it packed far more detail and polish, it was essentially the same game he created in just a few minutes.

When it comes to the third element of LittleBigPlanet, Share, the team is working on a seamless connection between the PS Vita and PS3 community, including LBP.me compatibility. It seems clear that finding new levels to play will be as easy on PS Vita as it is on PS3. Perhaps most importantly, the simplicity of the new Create interface should entice countless new players to contribute to the millions of levels already living in the LBP ecosystem.